Ph.D. in Informatics - Health Track

James Clawson’s research interests are in HCI, ubiquitous and wearable computing, and mobile health with a focus on designing and evaluating systems that support patient’s everyday engagement with their health and wellness. His recent work includes two yearlong in-the-wild deployments of mobile health technologies to support breast cancer patients as well as investigating the adoption, use, and abandonment of wearable health tracking technologies.

Dana Habeeb is trained as an architect and urban designer. She brings a design perspective to her research in environmental planning and health. She investigates ways to engage and empower individuals to respond to current and future environmental problems by synthesizing research in climate change, public health, and environmental sensing.

Patrick Shih utilizes mixed methods approaches to tackle research problems in online and geographic communities. His current research focuses on leveraging awareness of individual and community activities embedded in sensor technologies, smart devices, social media, and online forums in the design and construction of novel persuasive interfaces and civic engagement platforms that facilitate sustainable motivational and behavioral changes.

Katie Siek’s primary research interests are in human computer interaction, health informatics, and ubiquitous computing. More specifically, she is interested in how sociotechnical interventions affect personal health and well being. Her research is supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the National Science Foundation including a five-year NSF CAREER award. She has been awarded a CRA-W Borg Early Career Award and a Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance Distinguished Visiting Fellowship.

Specializing in computational health, Madhurima Vardhan leverages Generative Artificial Intelligence, High Performance Computing, and Physics-based modeling to advance personalized disease diagnosis and treatment. Her research is focussed on developing trustworthy and scalable AI models designed to aid clinical decision-making and non-invasive diagnosis. Her work emphasizes the creation of smart medicine technology using Large Language Models for the identification of novel disease biomarkers through clinical data mining, computational fluid dynamics, and the development of empathetic, AI-driven models that integrate behavioral science with patient physiology to enhance long-term patient wellness.