MOODS Team

The MOODS app, software, and website are developed by the software engineers, staff, and doctoral students at the MD2K Center of Excellence at The University of Memphis.

The office of legal counsel at the University of Memphis contributed with appropriate documents, consent/waiver forms, and the legal framework. The Information Technology Services at the University of Memphis hosts the MOODS servers and MD2K’s cloud infrastructure.

The following individuals and groups contribute to the MOODS study.

MOODS Leadership

Santosh Kumar, Ph.D., Lillian & Morrie Moss Chair of Excellence Professor in Computer Science, University of Memphis. As the MD2K Center Director, Santosh oversees all aspects of the MOODS project.

MOODS Software

Tim Hnat, Ph.D., Chief Software Architect. Tim designs and oversees the overall software and system architectures, leads the app and cloud development efforts for collecting data, and the development and testing of the algorithms that produce stress episodes on the smartwatch

Anandatirtha Nandugudi, Ph.D., Data Science Engineer. Anand is the principle developer of the MOODS study app which provides the user experience and is the primary interface participants use. He also is responsible for both Android and iOS specific implementations to ensure that the MOODS app works across both platforms.

Nasir Ali, Ph.D., Research Assistant Professor. Nasir architects and develops the cloud platform (called Cerebral Cortex) to collect and process the data. He also integrates algorithms and analytics developed by the doctoral students in processing pipelines on the MD2K Cerebral Cortex cloud.

MOODS Research Team

The following doctoral students at the MD2K Center of Excellence develop the algorithms that compute various analytics for visualizations and stress processing

Sameer Neupane contributes to prior works and research challenges related to analyzing participant data. He is responsible for developing the visualization each participant receive every week based on their collected data.

Mithun Saha contributes to research challenges with explaining the algorithms and visualization to participants.

Azim Ullah develops machine learning algorithms to convert smartwatch sensor information into stress and non-stress episodes

Soujanya Chatterjee contributed to the initial concept of the MOODS study.

MOODS Administration

Joe Biggers, Director of Operations. Joe coordinates the work of the entire MOODS team, handles communication with external stakeholders and enquiries.

Shahin Samiei, Associate Director for Research & Studies. Shahin directly supports the user privacy aspects of the MOODS app, compliance with various local, state, and federal laws regarding health data, and coordinates with the office of legal counsel to develop informed consent documents.