Professor Lee Ritterband

Lee Ritterband, Ph.D., is the Jean and Ronald Butcher Eminent Scholars Professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and Director of the Center for Behavioral Health and Technology. With degrees in clinical psychology and computer technology, Dr. Ritterband specializes in the development and testing of behaviorally-based digital health interventions. He has served as Principal or Co-Investigator on large research projects funded by multiple institutes of the National Institutes of Health (including NCI; NIMH; NIA; NCATS; NINR; NHLBI; NIMHD; NICHD; NIDDK; NIDA, NIAAA); the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute; National Science Foundation; the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council; Canadian Institutes of Health Research; Danish Cancer Council, Norwegian Institute of Public Health; the American Diabetes Association; and various US State and commercial entities. In 2004, he co-founded the International Society for Research on Internet Interventions which is the leading international organization focused on digital health research. 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 is also a co-founder of BeHealth Solutions, LLC, a company dedicated to increasing public access to evidence-based Internet-delivered health interventions.

Professor Gerhard Andersson

Dr. Gerhard Andersson is full professor of Clinical Psychology at Linköping University in the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning, affiliated researcher at Karoliniska Institutet, Stockholm, and clinically active as psychologist at the local hearing clinic. Andersson has a PhD in psychology and one in medicine and is trained as CBT therapist and supervisor. Professor Andersson is an internationally recognized researcher in the field of cognitive-behavior therapy delivered through information and communication technology as evidenced by his over 850 peer-reviewed publications. His research spans over both somatic and psychiatric conditions, and he is a leading researcher in the field of tinnitus and has published  several studies on depression and anxiety disorders. Andersson is also the editor-in-chief for the journal Internet Interventions. He was one of the founders of ISRII and took the initiative for the first meeting in 2004. In 2014 he was awarded the Nordic Prize in Medicine.

Professor Heleen Riper

Professor Heleen Riper is a full professor of eMental-Health (clinical psychology) at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and at the Amsterdam University Medical Centre, The Netherlands.

Over the past 20 years her research focus has been on the development, evaluation, and implementation of digital interventions for mental disorders such depression, anxiety, and problem drinking and especially those based on cognitive behavioral therapy. These interventions span technologies ranging from internet interventions, mobile health applications, web-based video-conferencing and virtual reality. The scope of Professor Riper’s current research activities includes the evaluation of mobile health and ‘blended’ treatments for depression and anxiety in specialized mental health care services. She has opted for an international perspective and collaboration throughout her academic career and acted as Principal Investigator of over 15 large scale European Union projects. Professor Riper has published over 375 peer reviewed papers and book chapters. In 2013 Professor Riper (co) founded the Journal of Internet Interventions. She has been a member of the ISRII from 2004 and she organized the ISRII in Amsterdam in 2009, co-organized it in 2014 in Valencia, Spain, and organized the ESRII in September 2023 in Amsterdam. During 2012-2016 Professor Riper was President of ISRII. In June 2021 she became chief editor of the Digital Mental Health section of Frontiers of Psychiatry. In December 2021 she received an honorary doctorate for her scientific work from the University of Bern (Bern, Switzerland) and in September 2022 a Lifetime award from the International Society for Research on Internet Interventions (ISRII 2022).

Professor Helen Christensen

Scientia Professor Helen Christensen (AO) is Scientia Professor of Mental Health at UNSW Sydney and Board Director of Black Dog Institute. She is the former Executive Director and Chief Scientist at Black Dog Institute, having led the organisation from 2011 to 2021. Professor Christensen is an international recognised expert on using technology to deliver evidence-based interventions for the prevention and treatment of depression, anxiety, suicide, and self-harm. Her research also encompasses prevention of mental health problems in young people through school-based and e-health interventions. Christensen has successfully secured millions in competitive research funding for over 30 projects, including large-scale clinical trials and targeted grants in prevention and early intervention.

Professor David Mohr

David C. Mohr, Ph.D., trained as a psychologist, is Professor of Preventive Medicine in the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, with appointments in Departments of Psychiatry and Medical Social Sciences, and the Director of Northwestern University’s Center for Behavioral Intervention Technologies (CBITs; www.cbits.northwestern.edu).  Dr. Mohr’s research lies at the intersection of behavioral science, technology, and clinical research, focusing on the design, evaluation, and implementation of digital mental health technologies and services. He has developed and evaluated numerous web-based and mobile interventions for depression and anxiety.  While there has been much research over the past decades demonstrating the effectiveness digital mental health interventions, successful implementation in healthcare settings has been elusive.  To address this research-to-practice gap, an overarching goal of Dr. Mohr’s current work is to design, evaluate and sustainably implement digital mental health services in real-world healthcare settings.

Dr. Mohr’s research has been consistently funded for more than 30 years by the NIH, other federal agencies, and numerous foundations, resulting in over 300 peer-reviewed publications, and more than 25 book chapters.

Doctor Sarah Vigerland

Dr Sarah Vigerland is a clinical psychologist and director of the Child and Adolescent Internet Psychiatry Unit in Stockholm, Sweden. Dr Vigerland’s clinical work and research focus on the development, evaluation, and implementation of internet-delivered cognitive behavioral therapy (ICBT) for children and adolescents with psychiatric disorders (e.g., anxiety disorders and depression). Dr Vigerland has been involved in numerous ICBT trials and has been instrumental in the implementation and dissemination of ICBT for young people in Sweden. In 2022, she was awarded Digital Psychologist of the year by the Swedish Psychological Association. 

 

Doctor Alexis Whitton

Dr Alexis Whitton is an NHMRC Emerging Leader and Co-Director of a NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Depression Treatment Precision at the Black Dog Institute, University of New South Wales (UNSW). She completed her PhD at UNSW, and postdoctoral training at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School, before joining the Black Dog Institute in 2020. She co-wrote Australia’s first tailored web and smartphone-based intervention for depression, which has over 200,000 users and has been integrated into primary mental health care in Australia. Dr Whitton currently leads several projects aimed at identifying novel approaches to subtyping depression, including by leveraging advances in artificial intelligence and digital phenotyping methodology, for the purposes of improving treatment precision.

 

 

Associate Professor Charles Jonassaint

Dr. Charles Jonassaint is an Associate Professor of Medicine and a practicing clinical health psychologist with an MHS in epidemiology. He has clinical expertise in chronic disease self-management and cognitive behavioral therapy interventions and has had extensive experience working with health disparities populations, namely, adolescents and adults living with sickle cell disease. He completed his graduate training at Duke University and went on to do a Masters in epidemiology and clinical research fellowship at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is currently funded through the National Institute of Health and the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute to lead a program of research in sickle cell disease focused on designing and testing evidence-based digital health interventions for pain and mental health.