About
I am a Senior Lecturer in Digital Health in the School of Computing and Information Systems (CIS) at the University of Melbourne. With undergraduate backgrounds in both computer science and philosophy, in general my research interests have fallen between the two. My PhD thesis was in the areas of artificial intelligence and the philosophy of information and computation.
My work now focuses on the application of digital technology, ubiquitous computing and artificial intelligence to mental health and behavioural science more generally, and I lead project activity in the CIS computing and mental health hub. Given my background in philosophy and computer science, I am also interested in exploring the philosophical and ethical dimensions of AI and digital (mental health) technologies.
The Latest
- February 19, 2023 - I have just revamped my School's digital health web section, including the addition of a new digital mental health section.
- January 7, 2023 - One of my PhD students is looking for participants to try out a digital mental health app in order to validate the first ever measure of digital therapeutic alliance that she is developing.
- October 20, 2021 - Clinician Perspectives on How Digital Phenotyping Can Inform Client Treatment - Invitation to Participate in Study
- October 7, 2021 - Special Issue Call for Papers: Artificial Intelligence in Mental Health
- July 30, 2021 - Seed funding from the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Ethics for the project Looking into the Psychiatric Panopticon: Ethical, Legal and Social Issues of Automated Nursing Observations in Acute Psychiatric Settings.
- June 4, 2021 - Funding awarded from Cisco for smartphone digital phenotyping research.
- March 29, 2021 - 2021 Symposium on Artificial Intelligence in Mental Health being held 25–26 November 2021 at The University of Melbourne.
- January 21, 2020 - Starting work as an investigator on the project "Orygen Virtual World Project: bringing to life a new age of digitally enhanced youth mental health services"
- October 8, 2020 - Personal sensing for mental health and wellbeing project page now up.
- August 17, 2020 - Looking for a web developer..
- March 23, 2020 -
Seeking a researcher interested in ethics and digital mental health. - July 23, 2019 -
Looking for a Psychology/HCI/IS researcher to do some work on digital mental health. - May 15, 2019 - Organising the upcoming symposium #digitalta2019, on the therapeutic alliance in digital mental health.
Select Publications
Digital Mental Health
- The Digital Therapeutic Alliance: Prospects and Considerations. JMIR Mental Health, 8(7). (2021) doi:10.2196/31385
- Support for Carers of Young People with Mental Illness: Design and Trial of a Technology-Mediated Therapy. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 26, 1, Article 4 (February 2019), 33 pages.
- Making the MOST out of smartphone opportunities for mental health. In Proceedings of the 30th Australian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction (OzCHI '18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 577-581.
- Artificial Intelligence-Assisted Online Social Therapy for Youth Mental Health. Frontiers in Psychology. 2017; Volume 8.
- A next-generation social media-based relapse prevention intervention for youth depression: Qualitative data on user experience outcomes for social networking, safety, and clinical benefit, In Internet Interventions, Volume 9, 2017, Pages 65-73, ISSN 2214-7829, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.invent.2017.06.002.
- Moderated online social therapy for depression relapse prevention in young people: pilot study of a 'next generation' online intervention. Early Intervention in Psychiatry, doi: 10.1111/eip.12354.
Formal Epistemology
- Truthlikeness and the Lottery Paradox via the Preface Paradox. Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
- Belief merging with the aim of truthlikeness. Synthese, July 2016, Volume 193, Issue 7, pp 2013–2034
- Explicating a Standard Externalist Argument against the KK Principle. Logos & Episteme. 2013; Volume IV(4):399–406
- The Logic of Knowledge and the Flow of Information. Minds and Machines. August 2014, Volume 24, Issue 3, pp 307–325
- Supplementing Belief Revision for The Aim of Truthlikeness. The Reasoner, September 2011.
- On Quantifying Semantic Information. Information. 2011; 2(1):61-101.
Media Articles
- Should smartphone data be harnessed to track mental health? (January 2021)
- Online social networking, digital mental health and COVID-19 - what helps and what hinders? (March 2020)
- Could your smartphone become your therapist? (August 2019)
- Digital Phenotyping: Smartphones as a Window into the Mind (May 2019)
- From Social Media to Social Support (March 2019)
- Smartphone technology taps into mental health of young people (July 2018)
- 4 Ways Tech can help your Mental Health (December 2017)
- Using Artificial Intelligence for Mental Health (July 2017)
Projects
Some projects I have, am, or will be working on. If you are interested in discussing or working on some of these projects, please get in touch.
Presentations
- Mental Health - Stories from the Trenches (Peak15 Health Tech, October 18th 2017)
- Integrity Constraints and Truth for Belief Change (RMIT Computer Science Department, November 27th 2015)
- Revising our Beliefs Towards the Truth (University of Wollongong Decision Systems Lab Research Seminar, October 20th 2014)
- A Framework for Semantic Information (University of Melbourne Philosophy Postgraduate Seminar Series, July 24th 2012)
- The Logic of Knowledge and the Flow of Information (Fourth Workshop on the Philosophy of Information, May 2012, University of Hertfordshire)
- The Logic of Knowledge and the Flow of Information (University of Melbourne Logic Seminar Series, November 4thth 2011)
- Conceptions of Information within Philosophy (The Difference that Makes a Difference, Open University Milton Keynes, 2011)
Team Members
PhD Students
- Tianyi Zhang - Digital phenotyping (personal sensing) for mental health and wellbeing
- Daniel Cabrera Lozoya - NLP for quality improvements in online mental health therapy services
- Fangziyun Tong - Digital therapeutic alliance
Research Assistants
Contact Me
