Ravi Karkar

Contact: rkarkar@umass.edu
Office: LGRC A351B

Current PhD Mentees:

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.

Select Publications

See my CV or Google Scholar for a complete publication list.

Health Tech for the People (HT4P): A Transdisciplinary Research Initiative Focused on Artificial Intelligence Tech Ethics and Design for Health Justice
Rachel (Rae) Walker, Jess Dillard-Wright, Ravi Karkar, Joohyun Chung, Jason Molony, and Cory Ellen Gatrall
Nursing Outlook 2025 • PDF • Source

A Systematic Review of Unmet Needs of Older Adults in Home Settings and Their Implications for Novel Technological Solutions
Andrew Dolman, Sidharth Kaliappan, Yanling Zhou, Divija Palleti, Jenna Marquard, Sunghoon Lee, Ravi Karkar, and Holly Jimison
Innovation in Aging 2025 • PDF Forthcoming

Balancing Caregiving and Self-Care: Exploring Mental Health Needs in Alzheimer’s and Dementia Caregiving
Jiayue Melissa Shi, Keran Wang, Dong Whi Yoo, Ravi Karkar, and Koustuv Saha
CSCW 2025 • arXiv • Source Forthcoming

Online Communities as a Support System for Alzheimer Disease and Dementia Care: Large-Scale Exploratory Study
Sidharth Kaliappan, Chunyu Liu, Yoshee Jain, Ravi Karkar, and Koustuv Saha
JMIR Aging 2025 • PDF • Source

Deploying and Examining Beacon for At-Home Patient Self-Monitoring with Critical Flicker Frequency
Richard Li, Philip Vutien, Sabrina Omer, Michael Yacoub, George N Ioannou, Ravi Karkar, Sean A Munson, and James Fogarty
CHI 2025 • Best Paper Award (Top 1%) • PDF • Source

SCOPE: Examining Technology-Enhanced Collaborative Care Management of Depression
in the Cancer Setting
Anant Mittal, Tae E. Jones, Ravi Karkar, Jina Suh, Spencer Williams, Yihao Zheng,
Lydia M. Andris, Nicole Bates, Amy M. Bauer, Ty W. Lostuter, Jesse R. Fann, James Fogarty,
and Gary Hsieh
CSCW 2025 • PDF • Source

AI vs. Humans for Online Support: Comparing the Language of Responses from LLMs and Online Communities of Alzheimer’s Disease
Koustuv Saha, Yoshee Jain, Chunyu Liu, Sidharth Kaliappan, and Ravi Karkar
ACM Health 2025 • PDF • Source

Hardware-Assisted Privacy-Preserving Multi-Channel EEG Computational Headwear
Abdul Aziz*, Bhawana Chhaglani*, Amirmohammad Radmehr, Joseph Collins, Jeremy Gummeson, Sunghoon Ivan Lee, Ravi Karkar, and Phuc Nguyen (* = co-first authors)
IEEE-BSN 2024 • PDF • Source

Evaluating a Novel, Portable, Self-Administrable Device (“Beacon”) That Measures Critical Flicker Frequency as a Test for Hepatic Encephalopathy
Philip Vutien, Richard Li, Ravi Karkar, Sean A Munson, James Fogarty, Kara Walter, Michael Yacoub, George N Ioannou
AJG 2023 • PDF • Source

Using Health Concept Surveying to Elicit Usable Evidence: Case Studies of a Novel Evaluation Methodology
Alex Mariakakis, Ravi Karkar, Shwetak N Patel, Julie A Kientz, James Fogarty, Sean A Munson
JMIR 2022 • PDF • Source

The Importance of Starting with Goals in N-of-1 Studies
Sean A. Munson, Jessica Schroeder, Ravi Karkar, Julie A. Kientz, Chia-Fang Chung, and James Fogarty
Frontiers 2020 • PDF • Source

Examining Opportunities for Goal-Directed Self-Tracking to Support Chronic Condition Management
Jessica Schroeder, Ravi Karkar, Natalia Murinova, James Fogarty, and Sean A. Munson
IMWUT 2019 • PDF • Source • Code

Beacon: Designing a Portable Device for Self-Administering a Measure of Critical Flicker Frequency
Ravi Karkar, Rafal Kocielnik, Xiaoyi Zhang, Jasmine Zia, George N. Ioannou, Sean A. Munson, and James Fogarty
IMWUT 2018 • PDF • Source • Code

Examining Self-Tracking by People with Migraine: Goals, Needs, and Opportunities in a Chronic Health Condition
Jessica Schroeder, Chia-Fang Chung, Daniel A. Epstein, Ravi Karkar, Adele Parsons, Natalia Murinova, James Fogarty, and Sean A. Munson
DIS 2018 • Honorable Mention Award (Top 5%) • PDF • Source

TummyTrials: A Feasibility Study of Using Self-Experimentation to Detect Individualized Food Triggers
Ravi Karkar, Jessica Schroder, Daniel A. Epstein, Laura R. Pina, Jeffrey Scofield, James Fogarty, Julie A. Kientz, Sean A. Munson, Roger Vilardaga, and Jasmine Zia
CHI 2017 • Honorable Mention Award (Top 5%) • PDF • Source • Code

A Framework for Self-Experimentation in Personalized Health
Ravi Karkar, Jasmine Zia, Roger Vilardaga, Sonali R. Mishra, James Fogarty, Sean A. Munson, and Julie A. Kientz
JAMIA 2016 • Source

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.
  • CompSci 325 - Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction
  • Info 490PI - Personal Health Informatics
      Spring 2023, Spring 2024, Spring 2025, Fall 2025
      Latest syllabus
Please reach out to me if you would like to view my course slides or other materials.

A PDF version of the CV can be downloaded from here.

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