About Us
Who we are
The Computational Health and Interaction (CHAI) lab is led by Prof. Alex Mariakakis in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto.
Our team has collective expertise across multiple topics within computer science and engineering, but our main areas include ubiquitous computing and human-computer interaction.
We frequently collaborate with academics in other departments like Biomedical Engineering and Information Science. Since our work is situated in real-world clinical problems, we also collaborate with various healthcare stakeholders like patients, clinicians, and global health organizations.
Our Mission
Reactive healthcare systems that respond to medical crises are more costly than proactive healthcare systems that prevent them. Unfortunately, delivering proactive services to everyone can be challenging due to limited time, money, and personnel.
Our mission is to leverage technologies already at many people's fingertips to produce effective and scalable solutions. We do not seek to replace clinicians; rather, we aim to empower them and all those who need their health monitored to improve healthcare delivery.
Our Approach
We leverage the sensors available on ubiquitous technologies like smartphones, wearables, and VR headsets to measure and predict physiological, behavioral, and contextual indicators of health. We also generate design recommendations for these technologies by investigating the implications of deploying them to relevant stakeholders.
Tackling these problems often requires drawing from multiple topics in computer science ranging from machine learning and signal processing to human-computer interaction and hardware design. Therefore, our work can be found at various international conferences (e.g., ACM CHI, ACM UbiComp, IEEE ICASSP) and journals (e.g., ACM IMWUT, npj Digital Medicine).
Our Culture
While researching new ideas can lead to exciting outcomes, getting to that point can be convoluted and frustrating at times. However, nobody should go through this process alone. In our team, support extends well beyond a single lab supervisor. It comes from other lab members, faculty, collaborators, and even friends and family.
No two research journeys are alike, so we regularly reflect on how we can foster a positive and inclusive environment that supports everyone. Most importantly, we embody a "work hard, play hard" mentality that involves group meals and events!
Our Location
Find us in Room 7231 of the Bahen Centre for Information Technology at the University of Toronto's St. George Campus.
Enter from College St., take the elevators on the right to the 7th floor, and contact Dr. Mariakakis to arrange your visit.