Ashma is an applied statistician with particular research interests in survival analysis, systematic reviews and trials in Mental health. She is a frontline advisor for the NIHR Research Support Service.

Ashma completed an MSc in Medical Statistics at the University of Leicester in 2009, before starting work as a Trial Statistician at the Edinburgh Clinical Trials Unit. In 2014, she moved to the University of Liverpool to lead the project on "Developing guidelines for the content of Statistical Analysis Plans for Clinical Trials", alongside Prof Carrol Gamble.

In 2015, she started her PhD funded by The MRC Network of Hubs for Trials Methodology Research, at the University of Liverpool on the analysis and reporting of time-to-event outcomes in meta-analyses and focusing on the impact of non-proportional hazards. Whilst working on her PhD part-time, she also worked for the Liverpool Reviews and Implementation Group from June 2015 to December 2017, working on appraising Single Technology Assessments for NICE. After taking Maternity Leave in 2017, Ashma started working part-time for the Cochrane Cyctic Fibrosis and Genetic Diseases group whilst trying to finish her PhD. 

She moved to The University of Manchester in October 2019 to take on a role as a Research Associate at the Biostatistics Collaboration Unit to support the Manchester Clinical Trials Unit as a Statistician. Her main areas of research interest are in trials in Mental health, Harms outcomes and Survival analysis. In January 2022, Ashma became a frontline advisor for the NIHR Research Design Service which from October 2023 is known as the NIHR Research Support Service. 

Chartered Statistician of the Royal Statistical Society (CStat)

Member of the RSS Manchester local group