Ritu Shah – BS in Computer Science student (co-op January - June 2024, part-time July-)

Ritu is a fourth-year undergraduate Computer Science student with a concentration in Human-Centered computing. Her enthusiasm for human-computer interaction is driven by a commitment to enhance the quality of life for many. Currently, she is contributing as a Research Assistant Co-op in Human-Centered Computing led by Profs. Stephen Intille and Matthew Goodwin. Through several of her experiences and personal projects, she has undergone several processes of understanding human perception and crucial design principles to create the ultimate user experience. With a strong drive to facilitate meaningful human-technology connections, Ritu is committed to utilizing technology for the betterment of humanity. ​

Marco Grados – BS in Health Sciences student (co-op January - June 2024, part-time July-)

Marco is a fourth-year undergraduate Heath Sciences student with strong passions in sports medicine and the use of physical activity monitoring. As a member of the PAAWS project with the mHealth group, his long-term goal is to gain experience with research intersectionality between healthcare and technology. He possesses genuine interest for bettering the lives of others through healthcare, and has previous experiences working with patients in a clinical setting.

Arushi Uppal ​– Computer Science doctoral student

Arushi is a computer science doctoral student interested in finding new ways to predict and prevent mental health issues and developing new AI-powered solutions to assist people who struggle with communication, motivation, and emotion regulation. She would like to develop technology enabling computers to respond intelligently to natural human emotional feedback and reinvent design techniques to build high EQ tools that enable people to have a better understanding of their well-being. She believes that emergencies such as the COVID-19 crisis have accelerated use of technology but with little attention to cognitive health. 

Abby Hassman– Health Science and Psychology student (co-op July - Dec 2024)

Abby is a fifth-year undergraduate student in Northeastern's College of Science. She has keen interests in enhancing health interventions and improve patient outcomes through the use of technology. These interests align with the goals of the PAAWS project she is working on as a Research Assistant Co-op. 

Shi Rao – TBA student (co-op July - Dec 2024)

TBA. He is helping to design a fully automated home lab to be used for research on home technologies and computing that support healthier living.

Cole Saucier– Data Science and Neuroscience student (co-op July - Dec 2024)

Cole is a mobile programmer and backend data scientist working on the Smart Home Laboratory. He is passionate about leveraging technology to help people live healthier, more natural lives. With a deep interest in science-backed lifestyle protocols, Cole aims to integrate behavior habits and tech applications. His enthusiasm for mobile programming and learning combine in his math learning application XeloMath. He is helping to design a fully automated home lab to be used for research on home technologies and computing that support healthier living.

Eleanor Washburn – Data Science and Health Sciences student (co-op January - June 2024, part-time July-)

Eleanor is a a fourth-year undergraduate student in Northeastern’s Bouvé College with a combined major in Data Science and Health Science. She is enthusiastic about the convergence of data and patient care, and she is eager to contribute to improving health outcomes through data-driven insights to enhance patient care. In pursuit of this passion, she is currently preparing to apply to Northeastern University's PlusOne program in Health Informatics.

Siddharth Mittal ​– MS in AI student

Siddharth earned his B.Tech in computer science from IIT Mandi, India in 2022. He wants to enable AI models to run on the edge devices, to reduce dependency on the cloud and device connections for human activity detection. Also, he has an interest in developing AI models which can be personalized (i.e., improved based on the user's physiological and manual responses) to help people make healthier lifestyle choices. 

Tinashe Tapera – Personal Health Informatics doctoral student

Tinashe is a PhD Student in the Personal Health Informatics program, interested in how technology can empower us to be more in control of our mental health. He did my undergrad and master's degrees in psychology at Drexel University in Philadelphia, where he co-authored a paper on the prediction of dietary lapses using heart rate data. After Drexel, he spent four years working as a senior neuroimaging data analyst at the University of Pennsylvania, where he developed, deployed, and maintained reproducible data preprocessing and analysis packages. He's excited to bring these experiences with him his PhD where he hopes to develop integrated mobile technologies that work with people and empower them to take control of their mental health.

Tinashe is co-mentored by Prof. Varun Mishra. 

Hoan Duc Tran ​– Personal Health Informatics doctoral student

Prior to joining Northeastern, Hoan received a BS in Computer Science at SUNY Buffalo with a minor in Mathematics. He is currently working on developing novel algorithms to evaluate physical activities (including physical activity types and durations, and gait evaluation) using strictly wrist-worn accelerometers. Dinesh was previously mentored by Prof. Dinesh John. 

Chengpu Liao– M.S in Integrated Product Design and Computer and Information Technology (at UPenn)

Chengpu is a designer+engineer at the University of Pennsylvania. He has worked at the Service Design Lab at Tsinghua University and the Industrial Design Lab at Beijing University of Technology. These experiences have shaped his perspective on the intersection of technology, design, and behavioral change. He is interested in leveraging mobile and sensor technologies for promoting health and wellbeing and is working on the active transportation project at Northeastern. 

​Gigi Gillen – BS in Computer Science and Design student (co-op January - June 2024)​

Gigi is a third-year undergraduate Computer Science and Design student. She is enthusiastic about Software engineering and App Development, as well as passionate about working towards technology that enhances the human experience, rather than diminishes it. I am really looking forward to learning more about HCC through research contributing to the Connect+ project in a meaningful way.

Sneha Kini ​– BS  in Biology (Minor in Data Science) student (co-op July - Dec 2023)

Bennett Hartley ​– BS in Bioengineering Medical Devices student (co-op July - Dec 2023)

Bennett is a third year Bioengineering Medical Devices student with strong interests in physical/mental behavior and health, medical devices, and data collection. He is working as a co-op on the PAAWS project. He has an extensive background working with people and is excited to meet new participants as he helps them complete the study. His long-term goal is to work on medical devices for researching neuroinformatics. 

Tess Willenger ​– BS in Health Science student

Tess is an undergraduate Health Science student who is interested in the intersection of research and public health. She has previous experience working clinically at the Emergency Department at Brigham and Women’s Hospital as well as Fenway Community Health Center, and as a co-op on the PAAWS project with the mHealth group. 

Bianca Reuter ​– BS in Business Administration student (co-op Jan-June 2023)

Bianca is a third-year Business Administration student interested in exercise science, public health, and research. She is working as a co-op on the PAAWS project. She is interested in learning more about the intersection of health and technology and contributing to research that will positively impact the lives and health of many people.

Michael Jeans ​– BS in Biology (minor Behavioral Neuroscience) student (co-op Jan-June 2023)

Michael is a second-year pre med student who loves to read and exercise. In addition to working on the PAAWS project, he is also a certified personal trainer at the gym on campus. He loves to help clients reach their goals, and to find a love of exercising. His goal after college is to work as an orthopedic surgeon.

Adithya Palle ​– BS in Computer Science and Physics student

Adithya is an honors computer science/physics student who is passionate about using technology to improve the general wellness. He is particularly interested in using AI to streamline healthcare and make life more enjoyable for those in need. He is curious about learning about how the world around him works and how he can use this knowledge to push the boundaries of technology for the betterment of humanity.

Yakshitha Poonati – M.S in Health Informatics student (Co-op)

Yakshitha Poonati earned a bachelor's degree in Dentistry from Mamatha Dental College, Khammam, India. As a dentist, she interacted with patients, learned about their concerns, and treated them for three years. Her research interests are preventive health promotion with personal health informatics and secondary prevention using automated AI devices that work based on pattern recognition and machine learning. Yakshitha's goal is to identify ways in which these technologies can be made more feasible to implement and deploy in U.S and global health care.

Christina Tong – BS in Health Science student

Christina is a Health Science student with a passion for public health and research, looking to pursue a career in the field. She has a strong interest in improving long term health outcomes through activity monitoring and the impact that this can have on a wider scale. 

Laura (Pia) Domenech Estarellas ​– Personal Health Informatics doctoral student

Pia is a first-year Personal Health Informatics PhD student. She earned her B.S. in Neuroscience and Cognitive Studies from Tulane University in 2022. She is interested in leveraging data from mobile and sensor technologies to better understand and treat mental health issues. Pia hopes to conduct research that applies to rural populations and minorities, specifically, the Hispanic/Latinx population. 

Pia is co-mentored by Prof. Aarti Sathyanarayana.

Yash Sanghvi ​– BS in Health Science student (co-op)

Yashi is an undergraduate Health Science student currently working as a co-op on the PAAWS project. 

Aryton Hoi ​– BS in Computer Science student

Aryton is interested in the application of computer science within the field of human health. He has previously completed a co-op at MIT Lincoln Labs with Group 48 working on an automated 3D axon tracing UNet neural network, and has also won an award at HackMIT2019 with a submission aimed at combatting media echo chambers.

Shashank Jarmale ​– BS in Computer Science and Business Administration student

Shashank is interested in applications of computer and data science to the physical sciences, especially medicine, energy, and the environment. He previously worked on a project revolving around machine learning-based detection of heart arrhythmias like atrial fibrillation using ECG data from wearable sensors. His hope is to work on applications of ML in domains that help build a healthier and more sustainable world.

Arya Shukla ​– BS in Data Science and Health Science and MS in DS student

Arya is interested in interdisciplinary research that combines her passions for public health and data. She is interested in how data analytics might help improve health systems, biotech, and pharmaceutical drug testing.

Dhivas Sugumar ​– BS in Computer Science student

Dhivas is interested in the use of wearable technology to detect illnesses in people at early stage and how doing so might help them receive treatment in time. He is working on new ways of visualizing intensive longitudinal data acquired from smartwatches and smartphones. 

Kyleigh Watson ​– BS in Health Sciences student

Kyleigh is a 4th year Honors Health Science student from Long Island, New York interested in pursuing a career in public health. She is currently working on my Honors Capstone project with the mHealth Research Group. This project is conducting research on the use of personal data tracking tools for health research.  

Vivek Sharma – M.S in Information Systems student

Vivek completed his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from GBPUAT, Pantnagar, India. He has experience working as a software developer at Tata Consultancy Services, India for more than two years. He has been working on IoT modules since his bachelors degree, and started working on Android and IoT integration in 2019.  He is working on developing some IoT room sensors using Arduino for research projects with the mHealth Research Group. 

Prathamesh Sahasrabuddhe – M.S in Information Systems student

Prathamesh completed his undergraduate degree in engineering in information technology from the University of Mumbai. He has been working in Android Development since 2015 and is an active contributor to the open-source community. He has built a custom version of Android called "FireHound." Many OEM developers developed builds of FireHound for their devices and posted them on respective forums. In 2017, he found a UI bug in Stock Android OS now patched in every Android Device manufactured after 2017. He's worked on apps for the police and on an Android security infrastructure for preventing reverse engineering of proprietary applications. He is working on app development for research projects with the mHealth Research Group. 

Aiden Borts ​– BS in Health Sciences student

Aiden is in interested in exercise science along with health, especially how wearable technology can lead to better health outcomes for people.  He has worked in the Biomechanics & Musculoskeletal Epidemiology Lab at Northeastern where he helped the research team use wearable technology to develop rehabilitation treatments for people who suffer from knee osteoarthritis.  As a co-op student working with the mHealth group, he is working on a large project that aims to develop algorithms to detect physical activity, sedentary behavior, and sleep from wearable sensors. 

Harish ​Sivaprakash – M.S in Information Systems student

Harish Sivaprakash is an Information Systems Graduate Student at Northeastern University. He has experience working as a full stack developer at product startup Configit in India for two years. He is working on creating an open-source video annotation tool for use by the mHealth Research Group and others.

Krit Goyal ​– M.S in Computer Science student

Krit earned his B.E(Hons.) in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from BITS Pilani, India in 2017. He then worked for an year at Samsung Research Institute, Noida as a software developer on the Codec team. He is currently working as an Android smartphone and wearables programmer at mHealth Research Group. He is developing the microT app which forms the basis of the Micro Ecological Momentary Assessments(μEMA) study, to collect round the clock data using built-in sensors and micro surveys from study participants. Krit is particularly interested in using data mining and machine learning techniques to draw inferences from this real world data.

Evan Andre ​– BS in Computer Science student

Evan is interested in data science, and in the past, has applied this to help develop a report on how campaign finance influences voting on energy-related legislation. He hopes to use these skills in conjunction with the cybersecurity and health disciplines. He is working as a co-op student on a project developing new algorithms for detection of physical activity, sedentary behavior, and sleep. 

Tony Lazenka

Tony is an accomplished mobile application developer working in the Boston area, who previously earned his MS in Computer Science at Northeastern University after earning a BA in Computer Science from Yale. Tony continues to work with the group on analyzing data from the CITY weight loss intervention project. He currently works at a Boston-area mHealth startup. 

Dharam Maniar

Dharam completed an MS in Computer Science at Northeastern. He worked at Infosys as a systems engineer for 2.5 yrs after completing his Bachelors in Computer Engineering from Mumbai University and now works as a software developer at SmarterTravel. Dharam worked on developing the core of the current mHealth Group EMA software -- both mobile data collection and server-side data visualization -- and he started our work on microinteraction EMA. He continues to work with the group to publish results and extensions of this work.

Caitlin Haynes

Caitlin completed her MPH from Northeastern University after earning a B.S. in Health Sciences from Boston University. Her MPH capstone research project involved testing a system designed to improve Ecological Momentary Assessment, using microinteractions and smartwatches. Caitlin continues to work with the group to publish results and extensions of this work. She currently works as Assistant Director of the Brookline Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Community Relations. She assists in providing education, advocacy and referral services to the Brookline community and acts as the Coordinator for the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). 

Anmol Sakarda

Anmol started working with the mHealth Group as a senior at Acton-Boxborough Regional High School as a summer volunteer (2017 and 2018). He will be matriculating into Northeastern as a new student in the College of Computer and Information Science in September 2018. Anmol has excelled at math and, among other things, written legislation approved by the Massachusetts State Senate to encourage public schools to offer whole food plant-based meal options and nutrition-based education to students. Anmol has assisted the mHealth Group with with accelerometer data management tasks and writing code to scrape Zillow for information about housing sales, relevant to the virtual bicycle highway project. He plans to continue working on this project.

Barbara Krug - Freelance artist

Barb is a game artist. Previously she earned a MFA in scenic design for theater from the University of California Irvine. Barb is currently working on the MDCAS crowdsourcing project and is interested in creating games for good. Barb thinks that in ten years new mHealth technology will change the way people take care of their bodies and hopefully help the health care system. Read more… ​

Apra Gupta - B.S. in Computer Science and Cognitive Psychology student

Apra is a sophomore Honors student at Northeastern with an obsession with learning new technologies and a deep curiosity about the human brain. She has extensive prior experience conducting independent research and designing software solutions to real-life issues. She enjoys the feeling of unraveling technologies that are new to her, and she has recently been getting involved in Machine Learning and AI technologies and hopes to find novel and creative ways to apply these cutting-edge concepts in personal health informatics!

Adeeb Arif ​– M.S in Computer Science student

Chaitanya Kaul ​– M.S in Computer Science student

Chaitanya previously earned a degree in Computer Science from NMIMS University, Mumbai, India. He has worked as a mobile application developer intern, doing both Android and iOS programming. He recently worked on a JavaScript-based web application using the MEAN stack that allows researchers using EMA systems developed by the mHealth Research Group as part of several funded studies to decrypt and plot data. The tool is critical to the success of the projects, which deploy smartphone and smartwatch technology to participants in the field and require remote data monitoring.​

Shantanu ​Kawlekar – M.S in Computer Science student

Shantanu is a Computer Science graduate student at Northeastern University. He earned a Bachelors in Information Technology from Mumbai University. He enjoys hackathons and has won prizes for some at Northeastern University, IIT-Bombay and UC Berkeley. He has worked as a Software Engineering Co-op at Logitech, Inc. In the mHealth Group, Shantanu is working on the NHANES dataset physical activity processing using AWS cloud computing.

Siddhesh Salgaonkar ​– M.S in Computer Science student

Siddhesh is a Computer Science graduate student at Northeastern University. He earned a Bachelors of Engineering in Information Technology from Sardar Patel Institute of Technology, Mumbai, India in 2012. He has 3+ years of software development experience as a Full Stack Software Engineer in QuinStreet, Inc., Pune, India. At Northeastern, he had a co-op with New York Life Insurance Company, New York. With the mHealth Group, he is working on data analysis for the NHANES accelerometer dataset using AWS-based cloud computing technologies.

Chandrika Sharma ​– M.S in Computer Science student

 Chandrika is a Computer Science graduate student at Northeastern University. She earned a Bachelors of Computer Science from the M.S.Ramaiah Institute Of Technology in Bangalore, India in 2013. She has wored as an Associate Technology Consultant IT Risk Assurance at EY, and as a full stack developer at her co-op with New York Life Labs. Chandrika wants to build applications that transform the lives of physically challenged individuals

Jason Lai - B.S. in Health Sciences student

Jason is a 4th year Health Science student and plans on going to dental school.  Last fall he worked as an Ophthalmic Technician at Mass Eye and Ear.  Jason is interested in integrating technology into his field of study. Jason is helping the mHealth Group work on technology to encourage active transportation.   

Justine Lo ​– M.S in Computer Science student

Justine earned her B.S. in Biomedical Engineering at Boston University. She has since worked as a Biomedical Engineer at the Institute for Aging Research at Hebrew SeniorLife, doing clinical research identifying and studying biomarkers for falls and other physical measures, such as standing balance and gait, in elderly adults. Some of her work involved analyzing the effects of health and wellness interventions using wireless sensors, multi-scale entropy, and muscle co-contraction.​ Justine is assisting with data collection for projects on automatic recognition of behavior from mobile data. 

Sandarsh Srivastav ​– M.S in Computer Science student

Sandarsh completed his undergraduate education from Jaypee University of Information Technology, India. He has since worked as a technology consultant at Computer Sciences Corporation and a software developer intern at the New York Life Insurance Company. Sandarsh is currently working on the NHANES AWS project and is interested in ensuring that cloud technologies can enable powerful and collective insights from various sources of health data (sensors, phones, and human-computer interfaces) that will be a foundation for healthcare systems of the future. Sandarsh is a certified AWS Developer. He thinks that in ten years, new mHealth technology will be capable of estimating correlations and analyzing individual health data from various sources against global trends on huge datasets, providing suggestions and predictions based on that analysis and enable users to make better health decisions and lifestyle choices.

Ishan Patel ​– M.S in Computer Science student

Ishan is a Computer Science graduate student at Northeastern University. He earned a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Engineering from Gujarat Technological University, India. His interests include artificial intelligence, game development and machine learning.. With the mHealth Group, he is working on developing games for citizen science, where the game-playing crowd in cloud labels data that supports behaviorally-related health science research.  

Anne Smithey – B.S in Health Sciences student

Anne Smithey is a senior in the Health Science program. Among other jobs, Anne has worked as a research assistant in the Infection Control Department at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and as a senior health educator and leadership council member for Peer Health Exchange in Boston. With the mHealth Research Group, Anne is working on the Virtual Bicycle Highway project.

Krystal Huey – Doctorate of Pharmacy student

Krystal is a fifth-year pharmacy student interested in how technology may impact pharmacy practice. Krystal has worked as a clinical trial coordinator and team manager at Brain Power, LLC, as a translational medicine clinical intern at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, and as a research assistant and peer tutor at Northeastern. With the mHealth Research Group, she is working on a study to validate microinteraction ecological momentary assessment (μEMA) for behavioural measurement.

Karmen Lu - B.S. in Computer Science student

Karmen is a rising sophomore in Computer Science at Northeastern. She is helping with mHealth Group mobile activity recognition projects this summer.  

Rohan Jahagirdar ​– M.S in Information Systems student

Rohan completed his undergraduate studies from Mumbai University, India. He worked for a startup called 135 Tech Labs developing mobile applications, backend data architecture, infrastructure scaling and mobile and web SDKs and APIs. He has worked as a research assistant working as a data architect at Northeastern, and as a Java Developer Intern with HealthEdge Software. He is currently working on developing mobile games-with-a-purpose to help researchers label mobile data to support machine learning and health experiments. 
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Clarence Hann ​– M.S in Game Science and Design student

Clarence is a Game Science and Design student at Northeastern, and he has completed his Bachelor of Science degree in Software Engineering at East China Normal University. He has experience in Unity Game development as well as .NET application development. He is working on the design and development of serious games that assist researchers who need labeled datasets to support the development of new algorithms for behavioral measurement using wearable sensors and mobile phones. 
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Aiden Zhang - B.A. in Computer Science and Economics student

Aiden is a rising senior in Computer Science and Economics at Brandeis University. He worked as data analyst intern in TalkingData last summer, where he did a project analyzing mobile app usage data. He is working with the mHealth Group this summer helping with mobile activity recognition projects. 

Alums

Spencer Franklin – Computer Science and Game Design student

Spencer is a 4th year B.S. in Computer Science and Game Design student.
He has worked on a diverse set of games at various times, as a developer, artist, or QA tester. He is especially interested in designing educational games. For the mHealth Research Group, Spencer is working on software development for the MDCAS crowdsourcing project. 

Ranadeep Guha ​– M.S in Information Systems student

Ranadeep is a second year Information Systems student at Northeastern University and has completed his Bachelors in Computer Science and Engineering at Heritage Institute of Technology, India in 2013. He has 4 years of industrial experience in Software Development, DevOps and Quality Engineering in companies including New York Life, Cognizant and Ericsson. He is extremely passionate about architecting applications on the cloud, experimenting with frontier technologies and solving coding puzzles. He is an AWS Certified Solutions Architect and Developer. At the mHealth group, he is using his expertise in developing on-demand and scalable applications on the cloud to run algorithms for analyzing data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) study.​

Nihar Patel ​– M.S in Computer Science student

Nihar Patel holds a bachelor's degree in computer engineering from Gujarat Technological University, India. His interest lies in machine learning and artificial intelligence. In the mHealth group, he is working developing Unity games-with-a-purpose to help with labeling accelerometer data to support machine learning.  

Spencer Franklin – Computer Science and Game Design student

Spencer is a 4th year B.S. in Computer Science and Game Design student.
He has worked on a diverse set of games at various times, as a developer, artist, or QA tester. He is especially interested in designing educational games. For the mHealth Research Group, Spencer is working on software development for the MDCAS crowdsourcing project. 

Max Rais – B.S in Computer Science and Game Design student

Max is a fourth-year undergrad CS and Game Design student. Max has previously worked as a software engineering intern at Intuit, and has participated on teams programming games and applications using Unity for clients as car companies and publishers. He helped the team making games for science in Unity as part of the MDCAS crowdsourcing project. ​

Sushant Mimani ​– M.S in Computer Science student

Sushant worked as an SAP consultant for 4 years after earning a B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering from Manipal Institute of Technology, India. He has also worked as a software developer and a DevOps engineer during his internship and co-op as a master's degree candidate. Sushant recently worked on developing programs for data QC and analysis of the mHealth NHANES PAM dataset and is interested in Cloud infrastructure deployment and provisioning and big data processing.

Ayush Kumar Singh ​– M.S in Computer Science student

Ayush previously earned a Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering from Graphic Era University in Dehradun, India. He has worked as a machine learning intern for Dassault Systèmes and a software engineer for TripAdvisor. Ayush recently worked on NHANES AWS project and is interested in real time inference systems using machine learning on large-scale sensor data.