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ABOUT

Xuhai Orson Xu

Hi! I am an Assistant Professor at Columbia University, Department of Biomedical Informatics and a Visiting Faculty Researcher at Google Research. I am also affiliated with the Department of Computer Science and the Data Science Institute at Columbia. I focus on applying human-computer interaction (HCI), artificial intelligence (AI) methods for health applications.

I lead the SEA (Sense, Empower, and Augment) Lab. We aim to leverage everyday data and build better human-centered methods, devices, and systems to sense, empower, and augment human health and well-being.

I have multiple openings for PhDs starting Fall 2026 (DBMI & CS). I always love to work with self-motivated undergraduates and graduate students on various research projects on human-AI interaction / AI for health & medical applications. See more details on our SEA Lab website, and shoot me an email if you are interested!

LATEST NEWS

  • 2026/01: Proud that three out of three submissions to ACM CHI 2026 from the SEA Lab are all accepted! Pre-prints will be available on our SEA Lab website soon. Proud of lab members Millie, Ruishi, and Shiyu!
  • 2026/01: Expanding research trajectory to bridge general well-being and clinical applications: Check out our recent work at ML4H/NeurIPS around integrating consumer wearable data and EHR for diagnosis prediction.
  • 2025/11: Three papers (Mental-LLM, GLOBEM, Talk2Care) are features among the ACM IMWUT editor picks (five in total)!
  • 2025/01: New chapter started at Columbia University DBMI! Check out the latest updates on our SEA Lab website.
  • 2024/09: Thrilled to start the visiting faculty position at Google Health!

Contact

xx2489 (at) columbia.edu

Department of Biomedical Informatics
Columbia University
622 W 168th St, PH20
New York, NY 10032

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RESEARCH

Behavior Modeling & Health Prediction

GLOBEM

GLOBEM

IMWUT'23

Cross-Dataset Generalization Algorithms & Platform

GLOBEM Dataset

GLOBEM Dataset

NeurIPS'22

Multi-Year Datasets for Longitudinal Behavior Modeling

Mental-LLM

Mental-LLM

IMWUT'24

LLMs for Mental Health Prediction via Online Text Data

Health-LLM

Health-LLM

CHIL'24

LLMs for Health Prediction with Wearable Sensor Data

Actionable Insights Interpretation

Personalized Behavior Modeling

Personalized Behavior Modeling

IMWUT'21

Collaborative-Filtering for Personalized Prediction

XAIR

XAIR

CHI'23

A Framework of Explainable AI in Augmented Reality

Interpretable Behavior Modeling

Interpretable Behavior Modeling

IMWUT'19

Using Behavior Rules for Depression Detection

Sleep-GPA

Sleep-GPA

PNAS'23

Nightly Sleep Duration Predicts Grade Point Average

Interaction & Intervention Design

Time2Stop

Time2Stop

CHI'24

Adaptive Intervention with Explainable ML for Smartphone Overuse

MindShift

MindShift

CHI'24

Leveraging LLMs for Mental Shift through Reframing

TypeOut

TypeOut

CHI'22

Leveraging Just-in-Time Self-Affirmation for Smartphone Overuse

Gesture Customization

Gesture Customization

CHI'22

Enabling Full-Hand Gesture Customization on Wearables

Clinical Decision Support

Talk2Care

Talk2Care

IMWUT'24

LLM-based Voice Assistant for Older Adults & Healthcare Providers

Classification to Clinical Insights

Classification to Clinical Insights

IMWUT'24

Towards Analyzing and Reasoning about MH Professionals' Needs