Home


Associate Professor and Founding Faculty
Department of Information Science
College of Media, Communication, and Information
University of Colorado Boulder
UCB 315
Boulder, CO 80309-0315 USA

Office: INFO 294
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 do anticipate recruiting new (external-to-CU) students more slowly over the course of the new several years as I re-build my research group, post-sabbatical, with a very targeted emphasis on technology design for mental health and context-aware diabetes care.


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)
see more...

Recent Articles, Papers, and Presentations

See more...