SUMMIT, NJ — Summit resident Abigail Hsu, a junior at Newark Academy, an independent school for grades six through 12 in Livingston, had a research paper published in the 2023 IEEE 23rd International Conference on Bioinformatics and Bioengineering.
For the paper, “Quantifying Exam Stress Progressions Using Electrodermal Activity and Machine Learning,” Hsu trained and tested a variety of artificial intelligence models to quantify stress levels and mental health of students during exams using electrodermal activity signals.
“I was super-interested in mental health, because a lot of teens struggle with it,” Hsu said. “I did some preliminary research and found that a lot of mental health studies were based on qualitative observations and talks from therapists and there weren’t a lot of data-driven studies on mental health. So that’s why I decided to apply machine learning and AI to study mental health.”
Hsu conducted this research with the mentorship of a post-doctoral researcher from the University of Oxford through the Cambridge Centre of International Research Academy program. Hsu was invited to present her work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Undergraduate Research Technology Conference this past October.
As a result of her findings, Hsu is working on creating Mental Metrics, a smart wristband and application that teenagers, doctors and parents can use to instantaneously track adolescent mental health. This business idea placed third in the 2023 BIG Idea Competition Out-of-State Competition. Hsu’s Mental Metrics also won the Wellness Award, which provides a $500 cash prize and a $500 scholarship from Northern State University.
Photos Courtesy of Julie Kayzerma