About me

I am a National Library of Medicine Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Washington Biomedical & Health Informatics Division, where I work with Professor Wanda Pratt and the iMed Research Group.

In my research, I study how social computing technology mediates human behavior for everyday health and wellness. I design new technologies to encourage positive behavior change, and study how those systems affect individuals and communities. I’m particularly interested in understanding the interplay between people’s social sense of self and their identities as healthy and active individuals. In my research I seek insight into the ways computing technologies can mediate and influence behavior change with respect to everyday health and wellness.

In my dissertation research, I designed and deployed StepStream, a social pervasive health system for middle school students to share and encourage everyday fitness activity. StepStream is a multi-week pervasive health deployment consisting of an after school program, wireless pedometers and a social network site. I've used it to better understand how online social activity can motivate offline health behaviors in youth, and I designed the system in collaboration with students from a local middle school.

I hold a PhD in Human-Centered Computing from Georgia Tech, an MS in Human-Computer Interaction also from Georgia Tech, and a BA in Cognitive Science from Occidental College.

News

CHI 2014 publication

I presented my paper paper—“StepStream: A Social Fitness Intervention for Middle School Students”—at the 2014 CHI conference in Toronto, Canada.

Attended CSCW 2014

Baltimore, MD February 2014

New magazine article: “Fitness Trackers at the Crossroads”

Published in the December 2013 issue of XRDS. Read it here.

If you’d like to learn more about my research, find me using the Contact page and say hello! Puns encouraged.