Faculty & Staff

Lee M. Ritterband, Ph.D.

Professor and Director of the Center for Behavioral Health & Technology

Lee Ritterband is the Jean and Ronald Butcher Eminent Scholars Professor at the UVA SOM. Continuously grant funded since 1998, Dr. Ritterband is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Society of Behavioral Medicine, and a past editor of the journals Health Psychology and the Journal of Medical Internet Research. Dr. Ritterband was selected as the 2019 UVA Edlich-Henderson Innovator of the Year.

Research Interests:
◊ development and testing of behaviorally-based digital health interventions
◊ areas of particular focus include sleep and cancer 

Karen S. Ingersoll, Ph.D., ABPP

Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences

Karen Ingersoll is a Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences and a Board-Certified Clinical Psychologist. As a clinician, she provides patient care weekly at UVA’s Ryan White clinic. Her clinical skills include Motivational Interviewing (MI), and with colleagues, she has adapted MI for group therapy and couples.

Research Interests:
◊ motivating people to adopt healthy behaviors despite experiencing stigmatized health problems such as HIV and alcohol use disorders.

Philip I. Chow, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Phil Chow uses mobile technology to monitor and intervene in mental health outcomes. He often uses intensive longitudinal and study optimization research designs. He has particular interest in developing personalized and adaptive interventions that deliver targeted interventions at specific  moments based on an individual’s needs. Dr. Chow also has expertise in theory and assessment of emotions and personality traits.

Research Interests:
◊  the use of mobile technology in monitoring and alleviating distress for various health issues

Kelly M. Shaffer, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Kelly Shaffer is a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in psychooncology. The goal of her research is to modernize and expand psychosocial care delivery to medically ill individuals and their families through scalable and effective technology-based interventions.

Research Interests:
◊ developing efficient and personalized digital health programs
◊ increasing female cancer survivors’ access to evidence-based sexual healthcare
◊ increasing family caregivers’ access to psychosocial and behavioral interventions

Meghan K. Mattos, Ph.D., RN

Associate Professor

Meghan Mattos is a nurse scientist with research interests in gerontology, cognitive health, and health equity. She is committed to increasing the accessibility of behavioral interventions and care to underserved and aging communities.

Research Interests:
◊ prevention and treatment of cognitive impairment in older adults
◊ use of technology in preventive health

Kara P. Wiseman, Ph.D., MPH

Assistant Professor

Kara Wiseman has a particular interest in leveraging technology to develop scalable interventions for cancer prevention and control and the use of research methods to create increasingly effective behavior change interventions. An additional area of interest is cancer survivorship research focused on the health behaviors of cancer survivors.

Research Interests:
◊ behaviors relevant to cancer prevention and control, including smoking cessation, alcohol use, diet, physical activity, and cancer screening

Katharine E. Daniel, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

Katie Daniel uses mobile phone technology and intensive time series methods to investigate the real-world effects of anxiety and emotion dysregulation. The goal of her research is to help individuals better navigate the complex emotional challenges of living with cancer through developing and implementing context-aware emotion regulation DMHIs.

Research Interests:
◊ emotion regulation
◊ anxiety dynamics
◊ personalized digital mental health care
◊ intensive time series method development

Administration

Cindy Orange M.Ed, Administrative Director

Gail Billingsley, Fiscal and Operations Specialist

Research Support

Christina Frederick, Research Coordinator

Kirsten MacDonnell, Research Coordinator

Jillian Glazer, Research Coordinator

Silvia Park, Research Coordinator

Mai Kadi, International Visiting Scholar

Engineering

Ian Terrell, Senior Software Engineer

Gabe Heath, Senior Software Engineer

Thor Page, Software Engineer

Positive Links

Ava Lena D. Waldman, MHS/CCRP/PMP, PL Program Manager

Ben Elliott, PL Telehealth and Outreach Coordinator

Helen Reed, MPH, PL Quality Improvement & Implementation Coordinator

Kayla D. Shifflett, PL Implementation

Pravalika Dontheneni, Developer

Jason Schwendinger, Lead Developer

Tianyi (Freddie) Jin, Developer

Alex Zolin, Systems Engineer

Helen Erwin, PL Implementation, Clinic Based

Student Research Assts & Volunteers

https://med.virginia.edu/bht/who/current-students/

Past CBHT Staff and Student Interns

https://med.virginia.edu/bht/who/past-staff-interns/