Rejoining MSU

As of 4/15/2018, I am excited to be rejoining the Department of Media and Information at Michigan State University. I will live in San Diego, CA and travel to Michigan.

Featured projects

Technology-Assisted Motivational Interviewing (TAMI)
The goal of the Technology-Assisted Motivational Interviewing (TAMI) project is to develop and evaluate automated motivational interviewing for family health. TAMI will help users find personalized motivations and strategies that can help develop healthier habits for oneself and the family.

Research ethics and privacy
We examine how systems can educate researchers and IRB staff regarding the data management of research involving emerging technology.

Community-engaged research with West Philadelphia neighborhoods
We work with the neighborhoods in the West Philadelphia area to understand the needs and priorities of the communities in improving health and wellness through technology.

Featured papers

FamilyLog: Monitoring Family Mealtime Activities by Mobile Devices July 12, 2019

Paper Presents empirical evaluation of using lightweight signal features from a set of complex activities during the meal (e.g., clattering sound, arm gestures of eating, human voice, TV sound) and fusing built-in sensor data of multiple mobile devices available in a family with a CRFs-based classifier. Abstract. Monitoring the family mealtime activities enables the analysis […]

Consumer Health Informatics Adoption among Underserved Populations: Thinking beyond the Digital Divide October 21, 2018

Paper Systematic review of facilitators and barriers to underserved populations’ consumer health technology adoption Objectives: Underserved populations can benefit from consumer health informatics (CHI) that promotes self-management at a lower cost. However, prior literature suggested that the digital divide and low motivation constituted barriers to CHI adoption. Despite increased Internet use, underserved populations continue to […]

Toward Predicting Social Support Needs in Online Health Social Networks May 23, 2017

Identified the features critical for predicting social support needs in online health communities. Background: While online health social networks (OHSNs) serve as an effective platform for patients to fulfill their various social support needs, predicting the needs of users and providing tailored information remains a challenge. Objective: The objective of this study is to discriminate […]

Increase in Contralateral Prophylactic Mastectomy Conversation Online Unrelated to Decision-Making May 19, 2017

The paper investigated whether conversations on online breast cancer community contribute to people choosing an aggressive, higher risk surgery. Abstract Background: The increased uptake of contralateral prophylactic mastectomy (CPM) among breast cancer patients remains poorly understood. We hypothesized that the increased rate of CPM is represented in conversations on an online breast cancer community and […]

FamilyLog: A Mobile System for Monitoring Family Mealtime Activities May 19, 2017

This paper presents evaluation of the FamilyLog system with 37 subjects from 8 families. The system automatically detects activities during the mealtime, including occurrence and duration of meal, conversations, participants, and TV viewing using acoustic data from phones and smartwatches. [paper] Title FamilyLog: A Mobile System for Monitoring Family Mealtime Activities Abstract Research has shown […]

Travel and meetings

Aug 19-20, 2019. PRVACI Symposium 2019. Berkeley, CA

June 23-28, 2019. HCIC 2019. Parajo Dunes, Watsonville, CA

February 27, 2019. NYU Langone Medical Center, Healthcare Innovation Bridging Research, Informatics, and Design Lab (HiBRID Lab). Research talk

February 20-22, 2019. Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI. Department of Media and Information.

February 7, 2019. Drexel University, College of Computing and Informatics.

January 31, 2019. New Jersey Institute of Technology, Department of Informatics. Newark, NJ.

January 28, 2019. Montclair State University, Department of Computer Science. Montclair, NJ.

January 22-23, 2019. Michigan State University, MI845 class lecture.

January 11, 2019. Columbia University, External committee, Dissertation Defense--Drashko Nakikj.

December 17, 2018. Dataminr, Inc. NYC, NY. Research talk: "People, processes, and design"

September 17-18, 2018. NSF Smart and Connected Health PI meeting

May 15, 2018. Washington DC. National Science Foundation. CISE CAREER Workshop

March 21-22, 2017. Boston, MA. NSF Smart and Connected Health meeting.

March 20, 2017. Boston, MA. "Closing the methodological loop in biomedical informatics research." Special seminar talk. Harvard Medical School Division of Preventive Medicine.