Health Technology Design

Online Survey Bot attack: Dealing with Fraudulent Research Responses

In July 2021, we launched an online user study on digital COVID-19 immunity
certificates in the Republic of Ireland. The study design included an
initial online screening survey with a random prize draw among those who
completed it (20 euro Amazon voucher), which attracted a bot attack with a
massive number of fraudulent survey responses threatening the integrity of
our screening survey. In this post, I describe the challenge and suggest
strategies to mitigate or even avoid it for future studies.

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How does one become a postdoc? Part 2: MSCA COFUND Postdoctoral Fellowship

I work as a postdoc, but how did I come to this? How does one become a
postdoc? Here is the second part of the answer to this question; please,
see the first part here: How does one become a postdoc? My story (part 1).
Towards the end of the PhD, everyone starts thinking of “what’s next”.
There are different paths one can take after adding a Dr to their title. In
computer science, you are often asked whether you want to stay in academia
or switch to industry…

[6.5 MINS READ]

Machine Learning for Outcome Prediction

Machine learning methods have the potential to enable the development of more personalized approaches to treatment of mental health conditions. Digital treatment delivery may be particularly amenable to the application of these techniques. I am delighted to be a co-author of a paper from a cross-disciplinary international team, published in World Psychiatry. The paper examines the potential of machine learning to provide outcome predictions for mental health treatment, as well as considering ethical challenges surrounding the use of these techniques.… Read more

Chairing ACM DSP

The ACM Distinguished Speaker Program allows organisers of events to request accomplished speakers in many aspects of computing, with financial support for travel coming from the ACM. It is particularly useful for ACM chapters, professsional meetups, and (not-for-profit) conferences. It is currently run under the ACM practitioners board. Having been on the committee for the last few years, and having run recruitment initiatives together with SIGCHI and SIGGRAPH, I’ve been asked to co-chair the commitee for a while. I have a number of ideas I would like to push, but if you have any feedback or suggestions on the program then let me know!… Read more