AI System for Detecting Emerging Mood Problems in Young People using Digital Phenotypes

About the Project

How can smartphone and social media use, music listening and health data (digital phenotypes – DPs) be used for identification and early intervention of emerging mood problems in young people in higher education (YPHE)?

Applications are invited for a fully-funded PhD (fees + stipend) to begin October 2026 on a research project co-developing an AI to predict anxiety and depression in students using smartphone data. The successful candidate will be based at University of Warwick and will be co-supervised by Dr Sagar Jilka and Dr Vivek Furtado.

Using a mixed-methods approach, we will qualitatively explore students’ understanding of mental health, AI and DPs (work package 1), work with a PPI group address these issues (Work Package 2), develop AI pipelines based on feedback and carry out a longitudinal study with students to test the validity of our AI (WP3).

We will use Deep Learning models (e.g. Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM)) to model DPs over time, incorporating patient views as part of our AI, and deploy using a Federated Learning approach to ensure privacy.