Team

Director

Prof. Stephen Intille– Research Group Director

Dr. Intille is a professor in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences and the Bouvé College of Health Sciences. His research focuses on the development of novel healthcare technologies that incorporate ideas from ubiquitous computing, user-interface design, pattern recognition, behavioral science, and preventive medicine. After ten years as Technology Director of the House_n Research Consortium at MIT, in 2010 he joined Northeastern University to help establish a new transdiciplinary Ph.D. program in Personal Health Informatics and the mHealth research group. Read more…

Doctoral Students

Binod Thapa Chhetry ​– Personal Health Informatics doctoral student

Binod earned his M.S in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington. After that he worked as a programmer analyst at Columbia University Medical Center before joining Northeastern. Binod is equally excited about recent advances in computing and mobile technology and behavioral and social psychology. By consolidating them, he aims to build interactive mobile health systems capable of just-in-time, tailored interventions to promote healthy behavior. He is currently focused on machine learning algorithms that learn behavior patterns and routines from a user’s sensor data.

Rithika Lakshminarayanan ​– Personal Health Informatics doctoral student

Rithika earned her B.Tech in computer science from Shiv Nadar University, India in 2019. She wants to combine her experience in computer engineering with behavioral economics to help people make healthier lifestyle choices. She is currently working on a new way of texting that allows the delivery of messages at the ‘right moment’ to provide support even when one is busy.  She is broadly interested in developing computer-mediated applications to facilitate better communication in underrepresented populations.

Jixin Li ​– Personal Health Informatics doctoral student

Jixin received his M.A. in Statistics from Columbia University, and B.A. in Psychology from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Prior to joining mHealth research group at the Northeastern University, he worked one year as a data analyst for an educational technology startup in Boston. His research interests are in the use of mobile and sensor technology to delineate human behavior and mental states. He is currently working on data analysis of uEMA and building on statistical software to analyze experience sampling data. He aims to integrate EMA in developing just-in-time, tailored mobile interventions to promote human health.

John (Jack) Hester ​– Personal Health Informatics doctoral student

Jack is a Reno native, and throughout his life he has had countless personal encounters with the health care system. He graduated from Emory University in 2019 with a Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies in Societies and Cultures with an emphasis in upstream healthcare and behavioral modeling, and went on to receive Master of Public Health in Health Services at Brown University where he graduated in 2021. He also has significant experience with the development of technology and software ranging from website development to NLP tools. He hopes to continue to combine his experiences with public health and technology to facilitate long-term behavior change and to create wearables as well as patient-facing tools and dashboards that will improve health.

Jack is co-mentored by Prof. Matthew Goodwin. 

Tinashe Tapera – Personal Health Informatics doctoral student

Tinashe is a first-year 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. 

Veronika Potter ​– Computer Science doctoral student

Veronika is a first year computer science doctoral student interested in research at the intersection of artificial intelligence and health care. In December 2021 she graduated from the University of Vermont with a BA in computer science, a BS in mathematics, and a minor in writing (English). ​

Arushi Uppal ​– Computer Science doctoral student

Arushi is a first-year 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. 

He Le ​– Computer Science doctoral student

Ha is a first-year computer science doctoral student. Ha is co-mentored by Prof. Varun Mishra. Ha earned her bachelor’s in mathematics and computer science from Gustavus Adolphus College. Ha is working on new behavioral measurement and intervention methods using mobile computing. Outside of the lab, Ha enjoys running, painting pottery, and watching Star Wars. 

Masters students

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. 

Undergraduate Students

An undergraduate? Interested in research? We are looking for highly-motivated students who want to get research experience! If this is you, see the Get Involved page. 

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. 

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.

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.

Affiliates

Dr. Aditya Ponnada (recent mHealth group graduate)

Aditya earned is Bachelors in Design (B.Des) from Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, India and worked for two years as a UX Researcher at Samsung Electronics, India. He is broadly interested in human-computer interaction, mobile/ubiquitous computing, and behavioral assessments. He aims to use mobile and wearable devices to measure behaviors that sensors cannot directly measure, using techniques such as ecological momentary assessment. He believes that, in a few years, individuals will be able to take better control of their health with the power of mobile technologies. He now works at Spotify Research. 

Dr. Qu Tang (recent mHealth group graduate)

Qu earned his doctorate in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University (Boston, MA, USA) while working with the mHealth group. His primary research interest is in mobile/pervasive computing, physical activity recognition and mobile sensing system design, especially in real-time sensor monitoring and activity recognition, human-in-loop/active learning and health data mining. Qu Tang received his M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering at Northeastern and his B.E. degree in Opto-Electronics at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC) in 2010.

Prof. Dinesh John

Professor Dinesh John is a faculty member at Northeastern in the Department of Health Sciences and a close collaborator with the mHealth Group. He is a trained exercise physiologist and an expert on the application of wearable sensors to measure and modify physical behavior. A degree in exercise physiology combined with an in-depth understanding of sensor function, sensor signal response to human movement and physiology, and signal processing, places him uniquely at the intersection of technology and lifestyle disease prevention. This has enabled him to pursue novel applications of technology in health through collaborative work with scientists from diverse fields such as engineering computer science, behavior change psychology, and public health. He is actively interested in recruiting PhD students who want to work in this space. 

Dr. Andrea Mannini

Andrea is a former visiting doctoral student who continues to publish with the group. When he visited, Andrea was at the BioRobotics Institute, Pisa, Italy, where he completed his PhD and now works as a postdoc. Previously he earned a M.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering at University of Pisa, Italy. Andrea is collaborating with the mHealth group on human activity classification from wrist accelerometer data and is interested in machine learning methods for biomedical signal processing.

Dr. Fahd Albinali

Fahd is the Founder and CTO of QMedic (previously EveryFit), an early stage mobile health start-up that is collaborating with the mHealth Research Group. He was previously a Research Scientist with Dr. Intille at MIT. His research has focused on building and studying interactive, context-aware solutions for at-risk populations. His work has been published in academic venues including UbiComp, AAAI, CHI and PerCom and has received one best paper award. Dr. Albinali received his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in 2008 working on activity recognition in domestic environments, a M.Sc. from the University of Arizona in 2002, and a B.Sc. degree in Computer Science from the American University in Cairo in 1999.

Key Internal Collaborators

Key External Collaborators