Multidisciplinary Training Program in Digital Mental Health Mentors
Each Multidisciplinary Training Program in Digital Mental Health fellow will have one mentor who is a mental health specialist and one who is a Human Computer Interaction (HCI) specialist. See a list of the mentors below.
Primary Mentors
Clinical Science in Mental Health (MH)
Institute for Public Health and Medicine (IPHAM) - Center for Dissemination and Implementation Science
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: Dr. Becker is a licensed clinical psychologist and implementation scientist dedicated to bridging the gap between research and practice. Dr. Becker studies both patient-focused dissemination (e.g., direct-to-consumer marketing, technology-assisted interventions) and provider-focused implementation (e.g., multi-level implementation approaches, workforce development) strategies. The overarching objective of her work is to increase both the demand for and supply of effective treatments in community settings.
Chief of Adolescent Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics
Professor of Pediatrics and Preventive Medicine
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: Marginalized youth populations. including HIV+ and LGBT young people
Assistant professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: Automated behavioral monitoring systems and quantitative behavioral analysis to improve the treatment and understanding of neuropsychiatric disorder
Assistant professor of Medical Social Sciences and Preventive Medicine
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: Digital mental health and eating disorders
Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Medical Social Sciences
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: Increasing access to and utilization of effective mental health and substance use interventions, particularly among underserved populations, by researching: 1) the development and evaluation of behavioral health interventions, 2) using patient- and provider-directed dissemination strategies to drive demand for effective health services, and 3) how to leverage technology to deliver interventions to underserved populations.
Research Assistant Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: Leveraging emerging technologies to study the vulnerability of anxiety and related psychopathology in adolescents and to develop and evaluate effective prevention programs designed to reduce the incidence of anxiety and related disorders.
Research Associate Professor, Medical Social Sciences
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: Behavioral medicine / health psychology, integrated care, sexual and gender minority populations, sexual health, people living with HIV
Research Assistant Professor of Preventive Medicine (Behavioral Medicine)
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: Dr. Meyerhoff’s program of research focuses on increasing access to suicide prevention care through the development and evaluation of technology-based preventive interventions. Dr. Meyerhoff has an interest in partnering with the lived experience community to better understand the needs and preferences of individuals accessing suicide-specific care. He has a background in intervention research for affective disorders with a specific emphasis on cognitive behavioral interventions for recurrent depressive disorders.
Director, Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies
Professor of Preventive Medicine, Medical Social Sciences and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: Digital mental health, design and evaluation of remote and digital intervention services, personal sensing
Professor of Medical Social Sciences
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: The adaptive role of positive emotion regulation in processes of coping with stress
Director, Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing
Professor of Medical Social Sciences, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: Translational research that improves the health of the LGBT community
Director, Center for Translational Health Research and Interventions advancing Equity for Sexual and Gender Minorities (THRIVE)
Associate Professor of Medical Social Sciences
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: Adolescent Health, Drug Abuse, Health Disparities, HIV Infection, Mental Health, Preventive Medicine
Co-director, Center for Community Health
Associate professor of Medical Social Sciences
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: Design and implementation of community-level mental health interventions, prevention of depression among perinatal women in home visitation and early childhood program
Associate Director, Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center's Survivorship Institute
Professor of Medical Social Sciences
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: Advancing the evidence base of contemplative awareness practices (mindfulness, yoga), resilience and emotion regulation in cancer patient populations and other chronic illness, as well as medical students and healthcare providers; Developing novel digital health solutions to increase self-management, engagement, and social connection
Human Computer Interaction (HCI)
Assistant Professor of Medical Social Sciences
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: patient-clinician communication, honoring patients' values and health priorities, managing multiple chronic conditions, shared decision-making; patient-reported outcomes, patient-generated data; population health informatics; computer-supported cooperative work, human-centered design, co-design
Associate professor of Mechanical Engineering and Communication Studies
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: Technology, design and innovation
Professor of Communication Studies
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: HCI, social computing and computer-mediated communication, focusing on applying cognitive and social psychological theories to the design, development and evaluation of novel collaboration technologies
Assistant Professor, Preventive Medicine and Computer Science
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
Research Assistant Professor of Preventive Medicine (Behavioral Medicine)
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: Rachel Kornfield's research focuses on the role of supportive communication within digital mental health interventions, including communication with peers, mental health professionals, and automated messaging systems. She is particularly interested in designing and testing digital mental health interventions that use computer-tailoring to connect individuals to the right kind of support, at the right time. She recently received a Research Career Development (K01) award from the NIMH, focused on designing and evaluating an automated text messaging intervention that supports individuals in self-managing depression, and that is personalized to users through reinforcement learning (a form of machine learning).
Research Assistant Professor of Preventive Medicine (Behavioral Medicine)
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: My research aims to leverage ubiquitous technologies to design theory-informed, accessible, and scalable digital mental health interventions (DMHI) to improve mental health outcomes for young people who are not treatment-engaged and who are under-represented in traditional treatment settings. I have a primary interest in working clinically with, and designing for, adolescents and young adults with a history of self-injurious thoughts and behaviors.
Secondary Mentors
Clinical Science in Mental Health (MH)
Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Medical Social Sciences
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: Implementation science
Associate professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Obstetrics and Gynecology
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: Integrating neuropsychiatry and behavioral intervention
Associate professor of Preventive Medicine and Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: Treatment and persistence of tobacco use and dependence among disadvantaged and underserved adult populations, including those with behavioral health disorders
Assistant professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: Development and implementation of technology-enabled sexual health promotion programs for young people, particularly sexual and gender minority youth
Suena Massey, MD
Assistant professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Medical Social Sciences
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: Substance abuse and pregnancy
Director, Institute for Public Health and Medicine (IPHAM) - Center for Health Equity Transformation
Professor, Obstetrics and Gynecology (General Obstetrics and Gynecology), Preventive Medicine, Medical Social Sciences
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: Promoting health equity and eliminating health disparities among low income, medically underserved women across the lifespan
Massey H Suena, MD
Associate Professor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Medical Social Sciences
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: Studies how pregnancy interacts with drug use to identify novel addiction treatment targets
Human Computer Interaction (HCI)
Associate professor of Communication Studies
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: How people manage attention and self-presentation as they work, play and otherwise interact using social technologies
Assistant professor of Communication Studies
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: Social computing, spatial computing and their intersection
Assistant Professor, Communication Studies and Computer Science
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: Human–computer interaction and information visualization, specifically communicating uncertainty, usable statistics, and personal informatics
Assistant professor of Communication Studies and Sociology
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: Use of empirical and mostly quantitative methods to study collaboration, organization and participation in online communities where people engage in collective action and information sharing
Assistant professor of Computer Science
Breed Junior Chair of Design
Research Interests/involvement in the Training Program: Social and crowd computing, artificial intelligence, human computer interaction, educational technologies and decision science