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

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.

Veronika Potter ​– Computer Science doctoral student

Veronika is a 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). ​

He Le ​– Computer Science doctoral student

Ha is a 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. 

Jin-seo Kim ​– Personal Health Informatics doctoral student

Jin-seo graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2024 with a BA in Cognitive Science and Computer Science, focusing on the intersection of computation and human cognition. Before joining the mHealth research group, he worked as a clinical research assistant at UPenn’s Linguistic Data Consortium, where he collected and analyzed speech data from Korean dementia patients. He is eager to develop this interest further and aims to design mobile interfaces that promote the well-being of patients with chronic medical conditions.

Umberto Mazzucchelli ​– Computer Science doctoral student

Umberto earned his MSc in Biomedical Engineering from the Polytechnic University of Milan. Following his studies, he worked for a year at Empatica as a data scientist. He is passionate about advances in computing and technology, particularly in how these innovations can enhance people's lives. He aims to leverage sensor technologies and artificial intelligence to develop systems capable of providing personalized interventions.

Hoan Duc Tran ​– Personal Health Informatics doctoral student

Hoan received a BS in Computer Science from the University at Buffalo. His research interest is in developing novel algorithms to understand human activities. In particular, Hoan aims to address the gap between current activity recognition research and practices. For example, Hoan is interested in leveraging the existing knowledge extracted from simpler laboratory-controlled studies to power the analysis of future large-scale cohort or surveillance studies, such as NHANES. 

Masters students

Miranda Zeng – MS in Computer Science student (Khoury apprenticeship program Sep - December 2025)

Wenqing holds a BA in Telecommunications from Indiana University Bloomington and is advancing her technical expertise through MS in Computer Science Align. She joins mHealth research group through the Khoury Research Apprenticeship program, where she bridges her interdisciplinary background with hands-on research experience. Wenqing is particularly interested in developing computational approaches to address real-world health challenges and improve the quality of life through technology.

Carly Bates – MS in Artificial Intelligence student 

Carly graduated from Northeastern University in 2025 with a B.S. in Computer Science and Media Arts . She quickly returned as a first-year M.S. student in Artificial Intelligence. She has experience developing automated healthcare solutions, including patient monitoring and diagnostic systems, at healthcare and biotech companies from Boston to San Francisco. Carly is passionate about leveraging machine learning, modern computing, and automation to create tools that improve patient outcomes, streamline clinical workflows, and enable personalized interventions in health and biotech.

Haichao Yang – MS in Computer Science student 

Haichao earned her bachelor's degree in computer science from Oregon State University with a focus in Human–Computer Interaction. She is now a second-year master’s student in Computer Science at Northeastern University. She has experience in app development. Her research interests include HCI, social computing, and mobile technologies for health interventions and encouraging behavior change. She's particularly interested in developing interactive systems that foster human health, wellbeing, social connection, and belonging—especially for vulnerable populations such as older adults or individuals recovering from trauma, and she's also interested in exploring how technology can support trauma recovery and healing, with work spanning a prototype for verbal tic detection aimed at untraining the behavior and intergenerational bonding app for older adults.

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. 

Julian Leonhardt – BS in Computer Science student (co-op July - December 2025)

Julian is a 5th year CS student. As a student-athlete who utilizes numerous wearable technologies to enhance my health and performance, he has developed a passion for helping others improve their lives through the same technology. During his time at the mHealth lab, he is using his knowledge of the rowing stroke and computer science to develop an application that uses mobile computing and AI to enhance rowing technique, ensuring safer participation and maximizing the user's experience. 

Hannah Bang – BS in Computer Science student (PEAK Base Camp Fellowship Fall 2025)

Hannah is a second-year undergraduate Computer Science student with strong passions in artificial intelligence, data science, and clinical, social, and behavioral psychology. She is currently working on developing technology to help connect people in more meaningful ways. She aims to promote a stronger sense of community on the Northeastern campus and connect students across the globe. 

Affiliates

Dr. Binod Thapa Chhetry (mHealth group graduate)

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.

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 mentored by Prof. Megan Hoffman and previously worked with the mHealth group and Prof. Matthew Goodwin. 

Dr. Aditya Ponnada (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 Mongo DB after a stint at Spotify Research. 

Dr. Qu Tang (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.

Dr. Dinesh John

Dr. John, who was previously the program director for the Digital Health and Technology Solutions portfolio in the Individual Behavior Processes Branch at the NIA at the National Institutes of Health, was also 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. 

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 (Past and Present)