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Associate Professor and Founding Faculty
Department of Information Science
College of Communication, Media, Design and Information
University of Colorado Boulder
UCB 315
Boulder, CO 80309-0315 USA
Office Hours: By appointment
Contact me via email:
svoida@acm.org (research)
svoida@colorado.edu (CU)
stephen@voida.com (personal)
The United States is currently experiencing a two-fold mental health crisis. First, our cultural disposition to overwork, including expectations of 24/7 availability and the virtues of being "busy" at all times are creating significant, work-related mental health pressures, embodied by unhealthy levels of stress and increased instances of burnout. Second, psychiatrists and psychologists are experiencing a vast increase in the number of individuals seeking mental health services for anxiety, depression, and mood disorders.
In response, I conduct research in mental health informatics from a human–computer interaction (HCI) perspective, drawing on interdisciplinary research methods and theories from ubiquitous computing, computer-supported cooperative work, health informatics, and psychology/cognitive science. My research examines both the existing negative and potential positive influences of information technologies on people's mental health. My students and I have found that technology is part of the mental health problem, and also demonstrated how well-designed technologies can be a part of the solution.
As an associate professor and founding faculty member in the Department of Information Science at CU Boulder, I teach various programming, hands-on research seminars, and ubiquitous computing courses, and I at least try to keep up with a few hobbies to stay balanced.
I'm always interested in working with motivated students! If you are currently enrolled at CU, please email me for more information about signing up for independent study course credits. If not, please take a look at the information for prospective students on the CU-Boulder admissions web pages, as well as the specific PhD applications requirements for information and computer science. I am not currently anticipating having the advising or funding capacity to recruit new (external-to-CU) PhD students for the upcoming (2025–2026) academic year, but I'm always willing to help prospective students find connections with other Information Science faculty members and research groups.
Current and Featured Research Projects
 Technology to Support Individuals with Bipolar (2012–Present) |  Temporality in Information Work (2013–Present) |  Multitasking, Email, and Stress |  Giornata (Activity-Based Computing) |
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Recent Articles, Papers, and Presentations
- Cho, J., & Voida, S. (2024). Toward more inclusive and accessible futures of remote work using a feminist eographical lens. In Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Meeting of the Symposium on Human-Computer Interaction for Work (CHIWORK ’24), Newcastle, UK, June 25–27. ACM Press.
- Doyle, D.T., Ghosh, J.K., Suhocki, R., Keegan, B.C., Voida, S., & Brubaker, J.R. (2024). Stories that heal: Characterizing and supporting narrative for suicide bereavement. In Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM ’24, pp. 354–366), Buffalo, NY. AAAI Press.
- Cho, J., Choi, D., Yu, J., & Voida, S. (2024). Reinforcing and reclaiming the home: Co-speculating future technologies to support remote and hybrid work. In Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’24), Honolulu, HI, May 11–16. ACM Press. CHI 2024 Best Paper Honorable Mention (among the top 5% of all submissions).
- Xu, T., Jost, E., Messer, L.H., Cook, P.F., Forlenza, G.P., Sankaranarayanan, S., Fiesler, C., & Voida, S. (2024). “Obviously, nothing’s gonna happen in five minutes”: Infrastructuring type 1 diabetes management in adolescents and young adults. In Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’24), Honolulu, HI, May 11–16. ACM Press.
- Xu, T., Yu, J., Doyle, D.T., & Voida, S. (2023, October). Technology-mediated strategies for coping with mental health challenges: Insights from people with bipolar disorder. Journal of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 7(CSCW2).
- Burns, Q., & Voida, S. (2023). Investigating mobile mental health app designs to foster engagement among adolescents. Interactive poster presented at the 2023 ACM Joint International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp ’23), Cancún, Quintana Roo, Mexico.
- Messer, L.H., Cook, P.F., Voida, S., Fiesler, C., Fivekiller, E., Agrawal, C., Xu, T., Forlenza, G.P., & Sankaranarayanan, S. (2023, May). Situational awareness and proactive engagement predict higher time in range in adolescents and young adults using hybrid closed-loop. Pediatric Diabetes 2023.
- Yamamoto, F.R., Cho, J., Voida, A., & Voida, S. (2023, October). “We are researchers, but we are also humans”: Creating a design space for managing graduate student stress. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 30(5).
- Hoefer, M.J.D., & Voida, S. (2023). Being, having, doing, and interacting: A personal informatics approach to understanding human need satisfaction in everyday life. In Proceedings of the 2023 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS ’23, pp. 2593–2610), Pittsburgh, PA. ACM Press.