Our Team

Sabine Wilhelm, Ph.D., is the Donovan-Chien Family Endowed Professor in Psychology at Harvard Medical School, Chief of Psychology at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Director of the Center for Obsessive Compulsive and Related Disorders (CORD) at MGH, and Director of the Center for Digital Mental Health in Psychiatry at MGH.

To address the increasing rates of psychiatric disorders in the context of a global mental health service provider shortage, her recent work has focused on the development of scalable digital approaches to treatment. Dr. Wilhelm has developed smartphone-based treatments for OCD, depression, and body dysmorphic disorder. She is currently working on AI and other cutting-edge approaches to enhance the detection and treatment of a wide range of mental health concerns.

Her work has been supported by the NIMH, the International OCD Foundation and many other funding agencies. She has published over 350 papers and chapters, as well as nine books and has received numerous awards for her work, including the Aaron T. Beck Award from the Academy of Cognitive Therapy, the Peter K. Ranney Innovation Award from the World Medical Innovation Forum, and the NAMI Scientific Research Award.

Keywords: Digital therapeutics; Smartphone mental health apps; Artificial Intelligence

Amanda Baker’s lab is using EMA and wearable sensors to establish the intra-individual role of psychophysiological and cognitive-behavioral mechanisms in the maintenance of Panic Disorder. They are also using these technologies during exposures in PTSD to map patients’ implementation of therapeutic skills in daily life and their clinical impact.

Abigail Batchelder is currently leading a pilot randomized control trial pairing a virtually delivered psycho-behavioral intervention with incentivized directly observed antiretroviral therapy via the emocha app for people who inject drugs living with HIV. Dr. Batchelder is also conducting a text-enhanced therapy intervention to reduce internalized stigma and shame for men who have sex with men living with HIV and substance use disorders who are sub-optimally engaged in HIV care. Additionally, she is completing a multimodal measurement study to assess stigma-related emotions using machine learning to inform future assessment and intervention strategies.

In Dr. Camprodon’s lab, they use digital biomarkers, including passive and active smart phone, wearables, voice and facial analysis and assessments “in the wild” to characterize neuropsychiatric populations, and in particular support the development of individualized neuromodulation therapies.

Dr. Sarah Coe-Odess is currently involved in research on two digital health programs (one smartphone cognitive behavioral therapy app and one web-based health and well-being program). The study aims to make OCD treatment more widely accessible.

Kyle Faust is currently working to acquire funding to develop an app to treat PTSD. His hope would be to eventually tailor treatments for specific patient populations and incorporate treatment for other co-morbid diagnoses.

Lauren Fisher is conducting an NIH-funded study of telehealth-delivered cognitive behavioral therapy for depression that has been adapted for individuals with a history of traumatic brain injury. The intervention incorporates continuous use of a Fitbit activity tracker. Dr. Fisher is also involved in another study that aims to integrate daily Fitbit activity tracking into traditional cognitive behavioral therapy for depression in order to optimize treatment outcomes.

Richard Fletcher develops mobile apps, machine learning algorithms, and wearable sensors to monitor and predict affect and behavior. Dr. Fletcher currently works with the MGH Recovery Research Institute to develop tools to monitor and modulate affect and stress in people recovering from addiction. He also holds an academic appointment at MIT as are search scientist, building sensors and algorithms for health diagnostics.

Dr. Brynn Huguenel’s research focuses on developing and testing smartphone interventions for mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression Dr. Huguenel has contributed to randomized control trials examining the effectiveness of smartphone apps that deliver cognitive-behavioral and mindfulness skills in improving mental health. She is also interested in understanding how user engagement with digital interventions can be best optimized and supported.

Dr. Jacoby is involved in randomized controlled trials within CDMH focused on developing and testing the efficacy of smartphone interventions that deliver cognitive-behavioral treatment for OCD and related disorders. She also collaborates on projects harnessing artificial intelligence and large language models to facilitate evidence based treatments for OCD.

Dr. Adam Jaroszewski’s work focuses on designing and testing scalable digital interventions for reducing suicidal thoughts and behavior and AI-powered tools to assist clinicians in delivering high quality evidence-based interventions.

Dr. Mischoulon’s work focuses on wearables for characterizing treatment response, interventions for caretakers of patients with dementia, and suicide prediction.

Dr. Patel is developing a chatbot for clients to reinforce at-home skills practice for her NIH K23 award; She also works on digital training tools (e.g., EMPOWER, which is a learning management platform to train non-specialists in psychosocial care).

Dr. Perez-Lougee focuses on developing and testing a mobile app to improve survivorship care among colorectal cancer survivors.

Dr. Smoller and his team’s research mission is to integrate research and clinical practice to enable more accurate risk prediction, targeted prevention, precise diagnosis and effective treatments for psychiatric disorders.

Dr. Surman’s research is focused on personalized remote psychopharmacology monitoring using digital technology

Dr. Louisa Sylvia recently completed two RCTs examining the comparative effectiveness of four online, psychosocial interventions (that we developed) to increase exercise and improve overall wellness, respectively. She is currently developing a stepped-care program with her colleagues for bipolar disorder which leverages a learning healthcare approach and digital mental health interventions. Dr. Sylvia has three ongoing studies to (1) examine a hybrid exercise program for older adults leveraging a digital health platform, (2) compare synchronous, virtual yoga to hybrid behavioral activation for depression, and (3) develop virtual, hyrbid, and in-person resilience programing for healthcare workers at community mental health centers.

Rachel Vanderkruik is currently conducting a pilot test of an app called “The Guardians” (developed by colleagues at the MIT Media Lab) among pregnant women with elevated depressive symptoms. The Guardians is grounded in Behavioral Activation (BA) principles and leverages gamification features to encourage user engagement. Her previous digital mental health research experience has included, 1) a perinatal depression screening tool that uses smartphone technology, 2) an online mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) intervention for depression, and 3) internet-based CBT (i-CBT) for depression and anxiety.

Susanne Hoeppner is involved with two lines of mHealth research that deal with app treatment efficacy and app user engagement. First, she works with Dr. Bettina Hoeppner’s team on the development of an app-based smoking cessation treatment that uses a positive psychology approachand on its adaptation to underserved sub-populations of people who smoke. Second, Dr. Hoeppner works with Dr. Sabine Wilhelm’s team on testing app-based psychological treatments for mental health disorders such as body dysmorphic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and major depression. Both lines of research show promise for making evidence-based treatment more accessible.