Emma O'Neil

I currently conduct research on collaborative care for people with serious mental illness and cancer at Massachusetts General Hospital. In June, I will be starting as a Clinical Research Coordinator in the Cancer Outcomes Research and Education Program. I graduated in December 2022 with a dual degree from The Wharton School and University of Pennsylvania, where I majored in Statistics, Cognitive Science, and Computer Science and minored in Mathematics. This past year, I completed pre-medical postbaccalaureate coursework at Harvard.

I am particularly passionate about mental health research, policy, and technology as well as questions in precision medicine, machine-in-the-loop systems in healthcare, psychiatry, integrated care, physician-patient interaction, and health equity. My research experience lies within health services, human-computer interaction, machine learning, natural language processing, and computational social science. My honors thesis involved the use of natural language generation with the goal of aiding peer counselors in generating messages employing the clinical skill of reflection. In 2021, I conducted research at Carnegie Mellon's Human-Computer Interaction Institute, developing a platform for training nurses to conduct motivational interviewing and framing the evidence-based design of the prototype.

I have spent time at non-profits, startups, and a software company. Most recently, I worked on building the member relationship management system MVP for Vanna Health, a company focused on providing psychosocial rehabilation at scale to improve outcomes and reduce healthcare costs. During my time at Penn, I focused on search and selection of entrepreneurs at Endeavor, building a curriculum to empower the next generation of social entrepreneurs at Fulphil, and underscoring customer value in enterprise software at ServiceNow.

Over the years, I have volunteered as a crisis counselor at hotlines, formerly at Teen Line and currently at Crisis Text Line. My mission is to advance mental health empowerment and support.

Research

Mass General Cancer Center | Dec. 2023 - Present
Work with Dr. Kelly Irwin on clinical research program aiming to prevent premature cancer mortality and improve the quality of life of individuals affected by mental illness and cancer.

UW Design, Use, Build Alliance REU | June 2022 - Aug. 2022
Conducted language analysis relating user reviews of mental health apps to expert ratings by One Mind PsyberGuide. Advised by Profs. Gary Hsieh and Tanu Mitra.

Honors Thesis in Cognitive Science | Aug. 2021 - May 2022
Applied natural language generation to aid peer counselors in generating messages employing reflection. Gathered cross-institutional support and resources from CMU and Stanford faculty. Primarily advised by Prof. Lyle Ungar. EMNLP 2023 paper.

CMU Human-Computer Interaction Institute REU | June 2021 - July 2022
Developed prototype to train nurses learning motivational interviewing and iterated on design through user testing. Researched and wrote on design rationale, e.g., application of role-playing, peer feedback, and reflection. Advised by Profs. Laura Dabbish and Robert Kraut. CHI 2023 paper.

MindCORE Lila R. Gleitman Fellowship | June 2019 - Aug. 2019
Piloted study examining whether people find it more difficult to make predictions for people who think differently from them. Presented 15-minute talk at research symposium. Advised by Prof. John McCoy. Slides.

USC Brain and Creativity Institute | June 2016 - June 2018
Conducted literature review of the effects of musical training on early reading development. Advised by Prof. Assal Habibi.

For-profits and Non-profits

Vanna Health: Software Engineering | Feb. 2023 - June 2023
Worked as front-end engineer to build Vanna's member relationship management system to support Vanna Coaches who work with members to develop personalized recovery programs for people with serious mental illness.

Endeavor: Entrepreneurship Selection & Growth | Dec. 2020 - May 2021
Wrote business profiles to inform evaluation in International Selection Panels. Spearheaded project for targeting socially diverse entrepreneurs, researching and presenting female and minority-founded tech companies.

ServiceNow: Value Management | May 2020 - Aug. 2020
Created executive summaries for 15 customers across industries. Pioneered database of insights from Knowledge 2020 conference customer presentations.

Fulphil: Project Management | Aug. 2019 - June 2020
Created social entrepreneurship curriculum for distribution in schools nationwide. Curriculum. Impact report.

Teaching

Penn Engineering: CIS 7000 Teaching Assistant | Jan. 2023 - May 2023
TA for Algorithmic Justice graduate-level seminar at Penn taught by Prof. Danaë Metaxa. Developed course website for Penn's HCI undergraduate offering with feedback from Prof. Andrew Head.

Penn Engineering: CIS 3990 Teaching Assistant | Aug. 2022 - Dec. 2022
TA for first Human-Computer Interaction undergraduate offering at Penn taught by Prof. Danaë Metaxa. Held office hours, graded assignments, designed rubrics, and guided and graded a subset of team semester projects.

Data Projects

Mental Health Support on Reddit
A text analysis of the social media mental health community: an exploration of mental health subreddits and a comparison with caption content of Instagram mental health influencers.

Understanding and Predicting Reported Mental Health
A report on predicting days one's mental health was not good in past month (BRFSS CDC) with socioeconomic variables, receival of clinical care, health factors, and mental health facilities offering resources by state (N-MHSS).

Female Founders in Tech
A data exploration of founder gender representation in the tech industry and internal perceptions in male and female-founded tech companies.

Vegan in Philly
A data exploration of vegan food in Philadelphia with Tableau.

Creative

Music
Studying violin for 18 years. Write, perform, and produce music. Recognized as a semifinalist in February 2019 in the International Songwriting Competition. SoundCloud.

Photography
I love capturing nature and seeing others' nature photography. ND Awards International Photo Contest 2019 Honorable Mention for image taken in Iceland. Sample of my photos.