We Are
HABits Lab

Where Preventive Medicine
Meets Computer Science

Designing, building and analyzing end-to-end mhealth
systems to help answer health-related questions.

Nabil Alshurafa

Ph.D., Director of HABits Lab
Northwestern University

Our lab is at the intersection of computer science and preventive medicine. Through analysis of continuous streams of data provided by smartphones and wearable sensors, we use signal processing intelligence and machine learning to understand a person’s moment-to-moment behavior, psychological states, and environmental context in which the behavior occurs. We design, build, and analyze end-to-end mobile health (mHealth) systems, while focusing on processing its data to help answer health-related questions.

It is the humanity within us and the desire to improve quality of life and healthcare costs that guide our solutions to the persisting health problems of our time through computer science and behavior science based research in passive sensing data analytics. Our goal is to advance our ability to understand, detect, predict, and ultimately prevent problematic health habits. We are the Health Aware Bits (HABits) Lab!

Understand

• Human Computer Interaction

• Focus Groups/Interviews and Surveys

Sense

• mHealth Sensor Systems

• Passive Sensing

Detect

• Segmentation

• Feature Extraction

• Low Level Machine Learning

Predict

• High Level Machine Learning

• Statistical Analysis

• Behavior Models

Prevent

• Behaviorist

• Interventionist

• Medical Expert

Recent News

Nov 6
2024
Boyang receives Live Research Spotlight award at SBM 2025

Boyang's work, 'Resource-Constrained Eating Detection: Enabling Just-in-Time Interventions via Wrist-Worn Sensors' was awarded Live Research Spotlight at SBM 2025.

Nov 5
2024
5 HABits Lab abstracts accepted at SBM 2025

Farzad, Boyang, Jiayi, Chris, and Soroush will present works at the 2025 Meeting of the Society of Behavioral Medicine (SBM).

Oct 17
2024
IEEE BSN 2024 a huge success, thanks in part to HABits Lab organizers

BSN24 organized by Conference Co-Chair Nabil & OC Co-Chairs Chris, Bonnie, Glenn, and Mahdi.

Oct 14
2024
Farzad's paper accepted by Nature Digital Medicine

A machine-learned model for predicting weight loss success using weight change features early in treatment

Oct 1
2024
HABits Lab student Glenn Fernandes starts internship at Apple

Glenn will spend time in California as part of his internship with Apple Inc.

Aug 9
2024
Glenn's HabitSense paper accepted by ACM IMWUT

Glenn's work, 'HabitSense: A Privacy-Aware, AI-Enhanced Multimodal Wearable Platform for mHealth Applications' now appears in ACM IMWUT.

Jun 4
2024
HABits Lab Alum Shibo Zhang wins MDPI Sensors Best Paper Award

Awarded Paper: Deep learning in human activity recognition with wearable sensors: A review on advances

Mar 15
2024
Farzad receives Meritorious Abstract and Citation Awards at SBM 2024

Both awards were given to Farzad's work, 'Defining Overeating Phenotypes in Naturalistic Settings: Leveraging Mobile Health and Machine Learning'.

213

Undergraduates, graduates, and Postdocs trained in mHealth.

$18M

In NIH, NSF, and Foundation funding.

655

People enrolled and participated in our studies to advance wearable technology and understand human behavior.

Grants

Software & Projects

Publications

09/11/2024

NIR-sighted: A Programmable Streaming Architecture for Low-Energy Human-Centric Vision Applications

09/09/2024

HabitSense: A Privacy-Aware, AI-Enhanced Multimodal Wearable Platform for mHealth Applications

09/06/2023

An Explainable Artificial Intelligence Software Tool for Weight Management Experts (PRIMO): Mixed Methods Study

07/21/2023

Detecting Eating and Social Presence with All Day Wearable RGB-T

05/16/2023

An End-to-End Energy-Efficient Approach for Intake Detection With Low Inference Time Using Wrist-Worn Sensor

04/28/2023

Is cartoonized life-vlogging the key to increasing adoption of activity-oriented wearable camera systems?

04/28/2023

Experience: Barriers and Opportunities of Wearables for Eating Research

Meet The Team

We’re are a friendly, forward thinking collective, an approachable team with a can-do attitude. Our curiosity and breadth of experience means we can turn our minds to new challenges, combining the need for functionality with a desire for aesthetic value.

Principal Investigator

Nabil Alshurafa

Ph.D., Director of HABits Lab

Ph.D. Students

Soroush Shahi

Ph.D Student

Glenn Fernandes

Ph.D Student

Boyang Wei

Ph.D Student

Farzad Shahabi

Ph.D Student

Saki Amagai

Ph.D Student

Research Staff

Mahdi Pedram

Ph.D., Adjunct Assistant Professor

Chris Romano

Research Study Coordinator

Bonnie Nolan

Research Study Assistant

Masters & Undergrads

Edward Chen

Undergrad

Helen Zhu

Undergrad

Dwayne Morgan

Undergrad

Tanmeet Butani

Masters

Gracelyn Shi

Undergrad

Collaborators

Bonnie J Spring

Director, Institute for Public Health and Medicine (IPHAM) - Center for Behavior and Health. Professor in Preventive Medicine-Behavioral Medicine, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Weinberg College of Art

Aggelos Katsaggelos

Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northwestern University, Joseph Cummings Professor, McCormick School of Engineering

Angela Pfammatter

Senior Methodologist and Associate Professor of Public Health, University of Tennessee

June Robinson

Research Professor of Dermatology

Josiah Hester

Associate Professor of Interactive Computing and Computer Science, College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, Director of Ka MoaMoa Lab

Judith Moscowitz

Professor of Medical Social Sciences, Northwestern University, Social Psychologist

Lauren Wakschlag

Vice Chair for Scientific & Faculty Development, Department of Medical Social Sciences Director, Institute for Innovations in Developmental Sciences Professor of Medical Social Sciences,

What They're Saying

It is the humanity within us and the desire to improve quality of life and healthcare costs that guide our solutions to the persisting health problems of our time through computer science and behavior science based research in passive sensing data analytics; helping us advance our ability to understand, detect, predict, and ultimately prevent problematic health habits. We are the Health Aware Bits (HABits) Lab.

Frequently Asked
Questions

We design, build and analyze end-to-end mHealth systems, while focusing on processing its data to help answer health-related questions. We focus on signal processing and machine learning techniques to process time-series data generated from passive sensors. To advance existing sensing techniques, a part of our lab focuses on the design of embedded systems.

People in HABits Lab have diverse backgrounds including Computer Science, Statistics, Electrical Engineering, etc. We conduct interdisciplinary researches in HCI, design, AI, machine learning, behavior science and computational medicine.

The ideal students are those who thrive at the intersections of disciplines, self-motivated, passionate about researches. Qualifications:
  1. Passion for solving health problems and working with passive sensors. You’re always thinking about how to use passive sensing to mitigate existing health and behavioral problems.
  2. Passion for programming. This drive keeps your gears turning late at night, and you find yourself wanting to stop talking with friends to come back and work in the lab. You keep tackling that bug or memory leak in your code to make sure you finish your project on time.
  3. Strong work-ethic that gets things done. You take responsibility for your project/research.
  4. Respectful of others for our time together. You always come to check-in meetings prepared with questions, and having documented everything you’ve worked on.
  5. Habit of reading and writing continually. As a researcher you love reading new papers, and recording and sharing your own findings. You’re always staying up to speed on the latest in passive sensing research.

We are looking for a passionate Software Engineer to design, develop and install software solutions. The role will be to facilitate software design and deployment for a research lab bridging the fields of computer science and healthcare. Qualifications:
  1. Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or related field.
  2. Proficiency in, at least, one modern programming language such as Java, C++, or C# including object-oriented design.
  3. Computer Science fundamentals in object-oriented design, data structures and algorithm design.
  4. Experience in managing large datasets on server, cloud and hard drive .
  5. Experience in designing, developing and deploying cloud technology solution.
  6. Experience in software development and full product life-cycles.
  7. Strong sense of ownership, urgency, and drive.

We are looking for a skilled Hardware Engineer to facilitate lab device hardware design and implementation for a research lab bridging the fields of computer science and healthcare. Qualifications:
  1. Experience working with and debugging common communication & debug protocols (JTAG, SWD, SPI, UART, I2C, etc.).
  2. Experience working with BLE interface is a must.
  3. Proficiency in software programing language: C/C++, Python.
  4. Experience with usage of laboratory equipment such as oscilloscopes, power supplies, logic analyser.
  5. Experience with schematic capture, PCB layout, and analysis techniques for multi-layer board designs.
  6. Experience with usage of laboratory equipment such as oscilloscopes, power supplies, logic analyser.
  7. Experience with PCB/A design embedded systems.
  8. Perform electronic circuit design, debugging, and validation for low power, battery-based, 8/16/32-bit embedded microprocessor systems with long lifespan and high-reliability requirements.
  9. Formulate specifications for parts, processes, and tests as needed for product design, validation, and manufacture.
  10. Familiarity with schematic capture, PCBA layout software, and circuit simulation tools.
  11. Proficient in SMT Soldering.
  12. Maintain documentation of designs, creation of prototypes, testing protocols.

We are looking for a research project manager that help manage all activities associated with biomedical &/or social-behavioral research studies considered very complex by the inclusion of several of the following: multiple investigators, teams, sites, sub-contracts, participants, longitudinal assessments/ interventions; &/or multi-million dollar budgets. Ensures completion of contract requirements & client specifications. Qualifications:
  1. Successful completion of a full 4-year course of study in an accredited college or university leading to a bachelor's or higher degree in a major such as social or health science or related; OR appropriate combination of education and experience and 5 years' research study or other relevant experience required.
  2. Successful completion of a full course of study in an accredited college or university leading to a master's or higher degree in a major such as social or health science or related; OR appropriate combination of education and experience and 3 years' research study or other relevant experience.
  3. Supervisory or project management experience required.
  4. Complete NU's IRB CITI training before interacting with any participants & must re-certify every 3 years.

Let’s Talk

680 N. Lakeshore Dr., Suite 1400, Chicago, IL 60611

Have a question? let us now and we’ll get back to you ASAP!