Organizers
ORGANIZERS
Ananya Bhattacharjee
Ananya Bhattacharjee is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on building technology to help people manage mental health. He conducts research in different social and cultural backgrounds: he has collaborated with Mental Health America to understand users’ needs and design interventions accordingly; he conducted field studies in Bangladesh to understand the alignment between existing mental health technologies and local people’s customs and values. His research works have been published in top venues like CHI, CSCW, and JMIR.
Dana Kulzhabayeva
Dana Kulzhabayeva is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto. She is interested in judgment and decision making. She is leading a project to design technology-based nudges to facilitate positive health behaviors; she has collaborated with HCI researchers to understand people’s behaviors when interacting with digital mental health tools.
Mohi Reza
Mohi Reza is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. His research is at the intersection of HCI and education technology. He designs tools to facilitate learning science research in online courses using adaptive field experiments, and investigates the effects of various interventions intended to help students in multiple areas of their lives (e.g. planning, growth mindset, stress management, etc).
Harsh Kumar
Harsh Kumar is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. His research interests lie in Human Computer Interaction, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing and their intersection with Social Sciences. He conducts research in designing text messaging systems to prompt reflection and manage mental health. He also explores the potential of developing mental health chatbots.
Eunchae Seong
Eunchae Seong is an undergraduate research assistant in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. Her main interests in research are human-computer interaction for education and psychology. She has been participating in mental health and education-related projects as a data analyst and programmer.
Xuening Wu
Xuening Wu is an undergraduate research assistant in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto. She is interested in social psychology and its applications. She has participated in research projects related to social psychology and human-computer interaction. She keeps seeking ways to apply social psychology to design more personalized digital mental health tools.
Mohammad Rashidujjaman Rifat
Mohammad Rashidujjaman Rifat is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. His research is at the intersection of HCI, ICTD, and faith. He conducts qualitative studies and computa-tional analysis to explore faith-based values, rationality, and politics; and designs technologies to mitigate faith-based intolerance and make technologies more faith inclusive.
Robert Bowman
Robert Bowman is a Ph.D. candidate in School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin. His research concerns the design of conversational user interfaces to support people with their mental health during their everyday lives.
Rachel Kornfield
Rachel Kornfield is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine and the Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies in Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her program of research focuses on the role of supportive communication within digital mental health interventions, including communication with peers, mental health professionals, and automated messaging systems.
Alex Mariakakis
Alex Mariakakis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto and an Affiliate Scientist at Techna. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Washington. He runs the Computational Health and Interaction (CHAI) lab, which leverages ubiquitous and emergent technologies to address problems related to people’s health and wellbeing.
Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed
Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at University of Toronto. He conducts research in the intersection between Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Information and Communication Technology and Development (ICTD). He received his Ph.D. in Information Science from Cornell University in 2017. He established the first HCI research lab in Bangladesh in 2009, and still maintains it. His research work is built around the concept of ‘voice’ that connects various branches of political philosophy to technology intervention.
Munmun De Choudhury
Munmun De Choudhury is an Associate Professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. She received her Ph.D from the Department of Computer Science at Arizona State University, Tempe. She founded and directs the Social Dynamics and Wellbeing Lab (SocWeB Lab). Her research interests lie in the intersection of computer science and social science. Her research has pioneered the computational use of social media data for mental health.
Gavin Doherty
Gavin Doherty is an Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science and Statistics, at Trinity College, Dublin, and a Fellow of the College. He has led a number of research projects in the area of Human Computer Interaction, with a focus in recent years on the design of healthcare technologies. His work has involved collaboration with researchers from the world’s leading companies, like Intel, and universities, like University of Cambridge; their work has been funded by well-known organizations, such as the European Union.
Mary Czerwinski
Mary Czerwinski is a Research Manager of the Human Understanding and Empathy group at the Microsoft Research. Her research focuses primarily on information worker task management, health and wellness for individuals and groups. She has received many awards for her exceptional work in applying psychological principles to the design and understanding of human-computer interaction.
Joseph Jay Williams
Joseph Jay Williams is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, cross-appointed by the Department of Psychology and Statistics. His research focuses on combining Bayesian statistics and Machine Learning algorithms to conduct randomized experiments in mental health and educational settings. He leads and founded the Intelligent Adaptive Interventions research group. His work has been published in top venues and received great media exposure.