Get Involved!
Our group works on problems in human-computer interaction and ubiquitous computing, applied machine learning for activity recognition from mobile sensors, and behavioral science and behavior change. The common theme, though, is that we want to apply innovative computing technology in the field of health and wellness promotion.
So a good question to ask if you are considering working with our group is this:
So a good question to ask if you are considering working with our group is this:
Do you want to change healthcare as we know it?
We are interested in working with students at all levels from undergraduate to postdoc with backgrounds ranging from computer science and engineering to health and psychology. In all cases, we’re looking for outstanding creative thinkers who are passionate about personal health informatics, mobile health, and novel health applications. Students coming from technical backgrounds should be solid programmers (or programmers in training) and be able to rapidly prototype ideas. Students coming from health/psychology backgrounds should be enthusiastic about new technologies and pushing the limits of new experimental methods and interventions that use them. Everyone interested in working in the group is expected to have an interest in merging technology and health. We build new technology, but our work is primarily about proving that we can solve real-world problems for typical people.
At the end of the day, our goal is to do work that genuinely helps people stay healthy and fit, and to have fun while we are changing healthcare as we know it.
At the end of the day, our goal is to do work that genuinely helps people stay healthy and fit, and to have fun while we are changing healthcare as we know it.
mHealth checklist
If you answer YES to any two of the following questions, you may be a good fit for our group:
- Do you love programming and want to create the next-generation of human-computer interaction devices?
- Are you interested in how we can mathematically model human behavior, states, context, and decision making to improve behavioral science?
- Are you a quantified-selfer who tracks your own behavioral data?
- Do you have creative ideas about how we can to transform our “sick”care system into on that is focused on supporting wellness throughout life?
- Do you read (for fun) books such as The Innovator’s Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Health Care or The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution Will Create Better Health Care? Or books on behavioral psychology and behavioral economics such as Nudge, The Power of Habit, and Thinking Fast and Slow?
- Are you interested in interactive machine learning and the connection between sensors, phones, and people? Do you want to write algorithms to automatically learn what people do?
- Do you enjoy working in interdisciplinary teams?
Interested?
Here’s some additional advice about getting involved with the group, depending upon your situation.
Potential Ph.D. students
We are usually recruiting new PhD students. Applications are due mid-December for entry the following fall. If you are a prospective Ph.D. student, see the webpage on information for potential Ph.D. students.
Current Northeastern undergraduate students
We are enthusiastic about having undergraduate students get involved in our research! We have projects that students in a variety of fields could work on (CS, design, health, psychology, math, etc.). The key criteria we look for is not experience level, but creativity, dedication, and a passion for issues related to mHealth and personal health informatics. Most positions will be volunteer. Read more about participation in undergraduate research with the mHealth Group and how to get involved.
Non-Northeastern undergraduate students
For non-Northeastern undergraduates, we will not have funding for part-time positions or summer internships. However, if mHealth or personal health informatics is your career direction and you are local and can devote some serious time to research to gain some experience (most likely because you are considering graduate school), you should contact Dr. Intille. Send a resume, transcript, and a one page description of what work you are doing and propose to do.
Current Ph.D. students
If you are already a Ph.D. student at Northeastern interested in personal health informatics research, please send Dr. Intille your CV, transcripts, GRE scores, and a description of what you have been doing since you arrived at Northeastern. If there appears to be a good fit between your background and interests and the research program, we’ll setup a meeting. It’s likely that you will need to work with the group for one or more semesters (perhaps while you TA) before any long-term advising or funding commitment would be possible.
MS students and applicants
Paid positions. MS students who are interested in getting involved in research for pay must typically demonstrate their skills, research potential, and commitment by either (1) volunteering for one or more semesters, (2) doing well in a course Dr. Intille teaches, or (3) getting very strong recommendations from another faculty member at Northeastern with whom the student has done research-related work. Dr. Intille, therefore, rarely funds MS students in the first-semester of the CS or COE MS programs. The only exceptions have been when a student can demonstrate an intimate knowledge of either Android mobile phone programming and/or pattern recognition by showing off either a large, sophisticated program or results from an experiment. For Android programming, this might be an application that has a well-developed GUI but also uses sensors, connects with a server-side database, and/or shows off advanced Android features; this app should be on the Android Market with actual users. For pattern recognition, this would be a publication that shows evidence that the student has conducted an experiment that started with sensor data collection and resulted in a publication on an activity recognition problem where Matlab, Weka, or R was used.
MS thesis positions. MS students interested in working on a thesis with the research group should be primarily motivated by research questions and, ultimately, continuing with graduate school. Dr. Intille will advise students on MS thesis projects who meet one of the criteria for a paid position, register for the two-semester thesis course sequence, and agree to work on a project of interest to the research group. A quality MS thesis will require over a year of effort, so students interested in this option should approach the group early in their program.
Occasionally the group may have funding for paid positions for students in an MS program in the health professions (e.g., exercise and public health). In those cases, we will send out notes to mailing lists for the most relevant programs. Students in the MS program in Bouvé and wish to work on mHealth or health informatics research should reach out and let us know.
Volunteer positions. Students interesting in volunteering with the research group must commit to at least 10 hours of dedicated work per week, not including attendance at group or project meetings. Students must also be prepared to demonstrate that they can work independently, making tangible progress on on small projects without the help of other members of the research group. Once students show dedication, members of the group, including Dr. Intille, will devote more time helping the student take on increasingly sophisticated tasks. If you are interested in volunteering, send Dr. Intille your resume, the courses you've taken at Northeastern with your grades received, hours per week you can devote to research (and when), and a description of what you would most like to work on or learn about.
For any type of position, also see the open positions page.
MS thesis positions. MS students interested in working on a thesis with the research group should be primarily motivated by research questions and, ultimately, continuing with graduate school. Dr. Intille will advise students on MS thesis projects who meet one of the criteria for a paid position, register for the two-semester thesis course sequence, and agree to work on a project of interest to the research group. A quality MS thesis will require over a year of effort, so students interested in this option should approach the group early in their program.
Occasionally the group may have funding for paid positions for students in an MS program in the health professions (e.g., exercise and public health). In those cases, we will send out notes to mailing lists for the most relevant programs. Students in the MS program in Bouvé and wish to work on mHealth or health informatics research should reach out and let us know.
Volunteer positions. Students interesting in volunteering with the research group must commit to at least 10 hours of dedicated work per week, not including attendance at group or project meetings. Students must also be prepared to demonstrate that they can work independently, making tangible progress on on small projects without the help of other members of the research group. Once students show dedication, members of the group, including Dr. Intille, will devote more time helping the student take on increasingly sophisticated tasks. If you are interested in volunteering, send Dr. Intille your resume, the courses you've taken at Northeastern with your grades received, hours per week you can devote to research (and when), and a description of what you would most like to work on or learn about.
For any type of position, also see the open positions page.
Postdocs
Students interested in a postdoc should already be working in mHealth, personal health informatics, or ubiquitous computing and publishing in venues such as JAMIA, CHI, IMWUT/UbiComp, MSSE, AAAI, Pervasive Health, etc. Those who wish to explore the possibility of a postdoc should send Dr. Intille a CV, transcripts, a brief statement of purpose indicating research interests and expected milestones, and a single journal publication that best represents abilities and interests. (If you send Dr. Intille all of this, he’ll get back in touch. If you don’t, you may not hear from him). Dr. Intille will work with strong candidates to try and obtain a source of funding, but that requires starting very early.
Visiting PhD students
We have had some great experiences with visiting PhD students. To make these visits successful (i.e., to get a high-quality publication for the student out of it), the experience should ideally last for at least six months. Projects of 3 months might be considered, but no less, and in those cases the student must agree to begin work remotely for 3 months prior to the visit. To explore possibilities, potential visitors should send Dr. Intille a CV, transcripts, a research paper, and a one page description of expected accomplishments (i.e., what is the paper that will most likely be written, using what experiments, methods, and technologies). In practice, these ideas would evolve once discussions with members of the research group begin, but any potential visitors should be able to articulate a clear plan to get the discussion going. Visitors must be willing to self-fund the visit (Northeastern will require proof of funding), and visitors will be fully responsible for arranging housing in Boston. We cannot help with the logistics.
International summer undergraduate interns
Unfortunately, we are not able to hire international summer interns or host students as volunteers. The only way for international students to get involved is by joining one of our open source projects and contributing remotely.
Volunteers outside of Northeastern
One of our goals as a research group is to make as many of our projects open source efforts as possible, and we seek to engage people in the research and hobbyist communities in helping to build useful mHealth tools. There may be possibilities for highly-motivated individuals to contribute to one of our open-source efforts. Those interested in doing this should contact us and tell us a bit about what they think they can contribute.
