Contact: rkarkar@umass.edu
Office: LGRC A355
Current PhD Mentees:
- Abhay Sheel Anand (co-advised with Deepak Ganesan)
- Itir Sayar (co-advised with VP Nguyen)
- Jeongah (Jasmine) Lee
- Sabrina Zaman Ishita
- Sidharth Kaliappan
- Qiuyue (Joy) Zhong
I am an Assistant Professor in the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. I co-direct the Health Tech for the People (HT4P) initiative and am part of the stakeholder engagement core of MassAITC.
My research focuses on using human-centered approaches to develop tools that enable people to collect, interact with, and use novel health data. Through these new health data experiences, I aim to empower individuals to actively engage with their personal health data, fostering informed self-advocacy and evidence-driven wellness decisions.
In the past I have developed tools to support chronic care for conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), cirrhosis, migraine, and depression. More recently, I am interested in:
- Developing novel tools to support better understanding and management of conditions such as mild cognitive impairment, mental health, and Alzheimer's disease.
- Developing n-of-1 (self-experimentation) tools to reduce barriers to people adopting a data-centric approach to better understand their health and well being.
- Understanding the ethics of health technology design. Look at my work with HT4P.
- Developing an understanding of the role of design research in informing clinical practice (connecting HCI with implementation science).
I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science & Engineering from the University of Washington. I am receipient of the NSF CAREER award. I am a 2024 and 2025 STRIDE faculty fellow, 2024 PIT faculty fellow, and 2023 mHealth Training Institute fellow. My research has been recognized by CHI and DIS, and I have organized cross-disciplinary panels and discussions around tools for self-tracking at ICTD and QSC.
I am grateful to have my research supported by NSF, NIA a2 Pilot Program, and UMass.
I am happy to talk with folks about my recent work:
- Supporting collaborative care management of patients with cancer and depression by integrating care managers, oncologists, psychiatrists, and administrators to treat depression in primary care settings.
- Introducing a new form of self-monitoring in people with end-stage liver disease enabling them to better understand their chronic condition.
Organizer
- Open Session Panel - ICTD and Personal Informatics at ICTD 2019
- Discussion - Designing Platforms for N-of-1 Experiments at QSC 2018
Program Committee
- Graphics Interface Conference - 2020
- Pervasive Health Conference - 2020
- CHI workhop - A Short Workshop on Next Step Towards Long Term Self Tracking - CHI 2018
University Service
- DUB Student Coordinator - 2017-2019
- DUB Doctoral Consortium Co-organzier - 2018, 2019
- CSE PhD Admission Committe (as reviewer)- 2017, 2019
- CSE 590h Seminar Student Coordinator - 2016-2018
- CSE PhD Mentorship Program (as mentor) - 2015-2017
- DUB Retreat Student Coordinator - 2017
- CSE Visit Days HCI Area Scheduler-in Chief and Housing Coordinator - 2017
- CSE Visit Days Housing Coordinator and Activity Coordinator - 2016, 2017
Reviewer
- GI, Graphics Interface Conference - 2020
- Pervasive Health, EAI International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare - 2017, 2020
- CHI, ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - 2017-2020
- IMWUT, Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (previously UbiComp) - 2016-2018
- AMIA, American Medical Informatics Association - 2018
- IDC, ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference - 2018
- DIS, ACM SIGCHI Conference on Designing Interactive Systems - 2018
- TEI, ACM International Conference on Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction - 2018
- ISWC, International Symposium on Wearable Computers - 2017
Volunteer
- Student Volunteer UbiComp - 2015, 2017
- Student Volunteer CHI - 2012, 2016
I primarily teach upper-level undergraduate courses related to human-computer interaction and health informatics. I also mentor undergraduate students through honors theses and Early Research Scholars Program.
Please reach out to me if you would like to view my course slides or other materials.