Event Details:
Trainee & Early-Career Showcase 2026
Join us on Wednesday, January 14th 12-1pm (PST) for our annual Trainee & Early-Career Showcase!
Register here: https://stanford.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_8WPZRaT2QjqXQlmEUJyIAA
Featuring current and recent trainees, as well as early-career researchers and clinicians from Stanford and the VA, this event shines a spotlight on those driving innovation in technology-based mental health interventions. Each presenter will share insights into a recent, ongoing, or upcoming project, followed by an interactive Q&A where attendees can ask questions, provide feedback, and spark discussion.
Our goal for this event is to showcase their work, create opportunities for valuable feedback, foster connections, and inspire collaboration within the Tech Hub community. We hope you’ll join us in supporting and learning from the next generation of innovators in mental health technology!
Meet the presenters:
Yujie Tao, Ph.D-candidate in the Computer Science Department in the SHAPE Lab with Sean Folmer
Mindfulness is the state of maintaining attention to the present moment with curiosity and openness. Existing mobile technologies to support mindfulness focus on formal practices such as meditation, requiring dedicated space and time. However, everyday mindfulness—a more flexible form of practice woven into routine activities such as washing hands or cooking—remains under-supported. In this talk, I will introduce a wearable device that adopts a sensory-driven approach to foster two key components of mindfulness, attention, and curiosity, in everyday contexts. Our device amplifies sounds produced by the user's hand interactions to make them more salient, such as the sounds of hands rubbing together or fingertips sliding across surfaces. By playing back the amplified sounds to the user in real time, the device leads to a fresh perspective on mundane interactions. I will discuss findings from our initial in-lab study and future directions for supporting everyday mindfulness.
Ashley Griffin, PhD, MSPH - Instructor at Stanford University Division of Computational Medicine and Investigator at VA Palo Alto Health Care System Center for Innovation to Implementation
Shared decision-making between patients living with chronic pain and their clinicians is highly valuable to align the array of treatment options and nonpharmacological management (NPM) strategies with patients’ unique pain experiences. Newer data streams, including patient-generated health data (PGHD) that are created directly by patients, offer rich information not typically assessed during visits (e.g., patient-reported outcomes on mental health and functioning, physical activity, sleep).
Dr. Griffin will present an overview of her VA Health Systems Research Career Development Award, which focuses on enhancing pain management by building a shared decision-making tool that collects pain PGHD and harmonizes it with electronic health record (EHR) data to improve use of NPMs and mental health, and reduce pain interference and opioid use. Her research uses a variety of methods to design and develop the tool, including card sorting, data visualization techniques, NLP, and interoperable SMART-on-FHIR architecture. She will also present preliminary data from design sessions with Veterans with chronic pain and related mental health comorbidities on their preferences for sharing PGHD with their care team.
Zuly Mamat, PhD - postdoctoral scholar - Bayley Lab
The purpose of the study is to demonstrate the feasibility of a web app in training veterans with PTSD to suppress images of their trauma memories. Dr. Mamat developed a web app during her PhD in which users can enter their events and go through series of tasks to train their attention across several days. Researchers can set the app up to have participant parameters which they must meet in order to proceed. It also gives a digestible output which can directly be used in data analysis rather than complex data files. It also allows multiple sites to collaborate in case there is a research project which involves multiple universities.
In Dr. Mamat’s current study, they will randomize a sample of veterans (N=20) with PTSD diagnosis to one of four strategy groups (5 participants per group) to acquire the ability to suppress details of traumatic memories: 1) flexible strategy (any form of suppression strategy that would fall under the conditions of “direct suppression”), 2) visual focus (cognitive dimension), 3) breath focus (physical dimension), and 4) heart visualization (psychospiritual dimension). Primary feasibility outcomes will include rates of recruitment, retention, protocol adherence, participant satisfaction, fidelity of treatment delivery, and adverse events. Feasibility will be determined by comparing these outcomes to benchmarks from similar studies. The study is currently recruiting and collecting data.
Register here: https://stanford.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_8WPZRaT2QjqXQlmEUJyIAA