About Me
I’m an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Virginia, where I lead the SONDER Lab (Sensing, Observing, aNd unDerstanding human ExpeRience).
My research asks how the digital signals woven into everyday life, from phones and wearables to laptops and social media, can help us understand human behavior and mental health as it actually unfolds. Part of this work is basic science: tracking how college students change across four or five years of their lives, how first-generation students adapt to a new environment, how information workers respond to job promotions or burnout, how all of us shifted during the pandemic. Part of it is methodological: figuring out what behavioral signals actually generalize across people and settings and where current models fall short. And part of it is applied: building AI and context-aware systems that can detect early signs of distress and deliver support that fits a person’s real situation, from clinical interventions for serious mental illness to journaling tools for students.
I did my PhD at Dartmouth with Andrew Campbell, where I spent six years on mobile sensing studies of students, workers, and clinical populations. Before joining UVA, I was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered AI, mentored by Gabriella Harari. Most of what I do is collaborative. I work with psychologists, clinicians, and neuroscientists as the problems I care about don’t fit neatly into one discipline.
News & Updates
→ New NIH/NIMH grant: Excited to share that I’ll be serving as Co-I on an NIH-funded R33 project developing context-aware mobile interventions for social recovery in serious mental illness (2026–2028). PIs: Eric Granholm and Colin Depp at UCSD
→ I’m organizing the UbiComp & Health symposium at NYU Tandon on June 12th with a fantastic group of collaborators.
→ New seed grant: Received another 30K seed grant from TYDE. PI Henry Kautz. Co-Is: Bethany Teachman, Stefanie Sequeira (UVA Psych)
→ New seed grant: Happy to receive 30K seed grant from TYDE grand challenge. Co-I Laura Barnes.
→ Attended BHI conference at Atlanta, Georgia and had a great time giving an invited talk at Emory Nursing.
→ College Experience Study has won Distinguished Paper Award (top 1%) at UbiComp 2025. Truly honored!
→ Happy to share that I’ll be joining UVA as an Assistant Professor of Computer Science starting Fall 2025!
→ Two recent papers acceptance/publications: survey paper on passive sensing in the workplace published at HCII and paper on AI-based productivity agent accepted at CSCW 2025.