Welcome
Sherry Pagoto, PhD Director, UConn Center for mHealth and Social Media; Professor, Department of Allied Health Sciences, Institute of Collaborations in Health, Interventions, and Policy, University of Connecticut Twitter: @DrSherryPagoto
Learn more about Dr. Blease
Dr Charlotte Blease is a philosopher and interdisciplinary health researcher. She is an Associate Professor at the Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, Uppsala University, Sweden and Research Affiliate at Digital Psychiatry, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston. Prior to this she was based at Harvard Medical School for five years and has held academic posts in Europe and the UK.
Blease has a diverse publication portfolio of more than 120 journal articles across digital health, evolutionary psychology, health psychology, philosophy, and ethics. Among her expertise is placebo studies, the role of artificial intelligence in undertaking clinical tasks, and online record access. In February 2024 her co-edited volume “The Nocebo Effect: When Words Make You Sick” was published with Mayo Clinic Press. She is also writing a book on AI and the psychology of the medical appointment for Yale University Press.
Learn more about our panelists
Judy Wawira Gichoya, MD, MS (X "formerly Twitter": @judywawira) Associate Professor, Department of Radiology, Emory University School of Medicine
Dr. Gichoya is an associate professor at Emory university in Interventional Radiology and Informatics leading the HITI (Healthcare AI Innovation and Translational Informatics) lab. Her work is centered around using data science to study health equity. Her group works in 4 areas - building diverse datasets for machine learning (for example the Emory Breast dataset); evaluating AI for bias and fairness; validating AI in the real world setting and training the next generation of data scientists (both clinical and technical students) through hive learning and village mentoring. She serves as the program director for radiology: AI trainee editorial board and the medical students machine learning elective. She has mentored over 60 students across the world (now successful faculty, post doc, PHD and industry employees) from several institutions around the world.
Stephen Aguilar, PhD, Assistant Professor, Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California
Dr. Stephen J. AguiIar is an Assistant Professor of Education at the USC Rossier School of Education. His research focuses on investigating how educational technologies—both emerging and established—influence teaching, learning, and motivation. To this end, Dr. Aguilar explores the impact of learning analytics, generative AI in educational settings, the digital equity gap, and gameful approaches to teaching and learning. Currently, he is co-leading USC’s new Center for Generative AI and Society’s efforts to understand when and how generative AI is used by students and instructors in post-secondary settings.
Joshua August (Gus) Skorberg, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Guelph
Joshua August (Gus) Skorburg is Associate Professor of Philosophy, Academic Co-Director of the Centre for Advancing Responsible and Ethical Artificial Intelligence (CARE-AI), and Faculty Affiliate at the One Health Institute at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. From 2018-2022 he was Adjunct Professor in the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. He received his PhD in Philosophy in 2017 from the University of Oregon. His research spans topics in applied ethics and moral psychology.
Learn more about Dr. Thomas
Dr. Thomas has been an active research mathematician for over 30 years with a focus on nutrition and obesity related modeling. She has worked with large complex and high dimensional datasets and co-invented the remote weight loss program, SmartLoss™, which has been clinically applied world-wide to guide and improve individual patient weight loss adherence through smartphone technology. She is an associate editor for the world’s top ranked journal for original research in nutrition, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and co-edits the series “Best (but oft-forgotten) practices”, which consists of methodologic commentaries or statistical tutorials. Dr. Thomas is currently the PI of the Artificial Intelligence, Data Engineering & Machine Learning (AIDE-ML) Center for the Nutrition for Precision Health Consortium which she also served as a co-chair for the Steering Committee. Dr. Thomas holds the 2012 Mathematical Association of American of NJ Distinguished Teaching Award, the 2015 Obesity Society George Bray Founder’s Award, and the 2023 American Mathematical Society Mary P. Dolciani Prize for Excellence in Research.
Learn more about Dr. Ozer
Elizabeth Ozer, PhD is a Professor of Pediatrics and Associate Vice Provost of Faculty Equity, Office of Diversity and Outreach at UCSF. Dr. Ozer is a psychologist whose research has focused primarily on the health of adolescents, young adults, and women. She has served as Principal Investigator on numerous federal research grants supporting multidimensional interventions to improve adolescent and young adult health through targeting clinicians, adolescents, and health care systems, as well as social determinants of health and disparities in the delivery of health services. For more than a decade, she has focused on ways that technology can be incorporated into successful models of preventive care to increase self-efficacy and promote behavior change. This includes developing and piloting an interactive behavioral/emotional health module for adolescents that can be integrated into health care delivery (AHRQ); designing a computerized personalized behavior change system for adolescent preventive health (focused on reducing substance use) that extends the reach of the clinician (NSF/NCI); and an NIH Science Education Partnership Award to enhance the training and diversity of the biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research network. Dr. Ozer leads the Maternal & Child Health (MCHB) funded Adolescent/Young Adult Health Network with a focus on developing a national transdisciplinary research agenda for adolescent and young adult health and translating research into practice.
Learn more about Dr. Rowe
Jonathan P. Rowe, PhD, is a Senior Research Scientist in the IntelliMedia Group within theDepartment of Computer Science at North Carolina State University, Managing Director of the NSF AI Institute for Engaged Learning, and a member of the Center for Educational Informatics. His work focuses on designing, developing, and evaluating advanced learning technologies, with an emphasis on game-based learning environments, intelligent tutoring systems, multimodal learning analytics, intelligent narrative technologies, affective computing, and user modeling. More broadly, his research is at the intersection of artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction, with applications in education, training, and healthcare. It's principal objective is to understand how computational methods can enable technology-rich learning experiences that are both highly effective and engaging. His research has been recognized with several best paper awards, including best paper at the Seventh International Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Conference (AIIDE-2011) and best paper at the Second International Conference on Intelligent Technologies for Interactive Entertainment (INTETAIN-2008). He led development efforts on several game-based learning projects, including Crystal Island: Lost Investigation, which was nominated for Best Serious Game at the 2012 Unity Awards and the 2012 I/ITSEC Serious Games Showcase and Challenge. He served as Program Chair and General Chair for the Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment, and currently serves on the editorial board of the International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education.
Learn more about our panelists
Christina Harrington, PhD Assistant Professor, Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University (LinkedIn: Christina N. Harrington)
Dr. Harrington an Assistant Professor in the HCI Institute at Carnegie Mellon University where she also have a courtesy appointment in the School of Design. She is also the Director of the Equity and Health Innovations Design Research Lab. She is a designer and qualitative researcher focusing on understanding and conceptualizing technology experiences that support health and wellness among older adults and individuals with disabilities. Her research employs design as a catalyst for health equity and socially responsible technology experiences. She explores these concepts through community-based participatory design and co-creation methods. Her work uses culturally tailored design to expand technology access and constructs of empowerment among marginalized communities.
Matthew DeCamp, MD, PhD Associate Professor, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus (LinkedIn: Matthew DeCamp)
Matthew DeCamp, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Center for Bioethics and Humanities and Division of General Internal Medicine at the University of Colorado. A practicing internist, health services researcher and philosopher, Dr. DeCamp employs both empirical and conceptual methods to identify and solve cutting edge problems at the interface of health care, policy and bioethics. He serves as Director of Research Ethics for the Colorado Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (CCTSI) and is a member of the Partnership of Academicians and Communities for Translation (PACT) Council of the CCTSI. Dr. DeCamp has two active projects on artificial intelligence in health care: one, as Principal Investigator of an NIH/NINR R01 on the use of AI-based prognostication in palliative care and another as Principal Investigator of a Greenwall Foundation Making a Difference grant examining ethics and chatbots.
Shiri Dori-Hacohen, PhD Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Connecticut (Website: https://shiri.dori-hacohen.com/)
Prof. Dori-Hacohen is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Connecticut, where she leads the Reducing Information Ecosystem Threats (RIET) Lab. She is also the Founder & Chair of the Board at AuCoDe. Prof. Dori-Hacohen’s research focuses on threats to the information ecosystem online and to healthy public discourse from an information retrieval lens, informed by insights from the social sciences. She is a recognized expert in the information ecosystem research area and has published extensively on the topic. Prof. Dori-Hacohen has recently founded the Reducing Information Ecosystem Threats (RIET) Lab, which focuses on controversial topics, misinformation and disinformation and the connections between them, and the ensuing impacts and implications. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and Google, among others. Prof. Dori-Hacohen has served as PI or Co-PI on $7.5M worth of federal funds from the NSF.
Learn more about Dr. Abdullah
Saeed Abdullah is an assistant professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) at Penn State. His research focuses on developing human-centered and data-driven technologies to improve health equity and access. His recent work has led to designing conversational agents to support health needs of diverse communities, including women with metastatic breast cancer and individuals with PTSD. He is currently working on using generative AI for health intervention design and clinician training. He is also exploring how to create supportive financial technologies for marginalized communities, including individuals with bipolar disorder.
His research has been recognized through several accolades, including the IST Junior Faculty Excellence Award in Research and the $100,000 Heritage Open mHealth Challenge award. His publications have received a Best Paper Award (MobileCHI) and an Honorable Mention (CHI). His projects have been supported by multiple grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.