Hello!

I am an interdisciplinary researcher interested in human-computer interaction and behavior science. I work at MongoDB as a Quantitative User Researcher to build the best understanding and models of developer experiences. I was a Research Scientist at Spotify, as a member of the Human-in-the-AI (HAI) Lab. Broadly at Spotify, I developed and evaluated interactive recommender systems and scalable content understanding approaches to help smaller creators (and newer content) succeed on the platform. I completed my PhD in Computer and Behavior Sciences from Khoury College of Computer Sciences and Bouve College of Health Sciences at Northeastern University, Boston, MA working with Prof. Stephen Intille. My PhD research introduced a novel experience sampling method using Smartwatches to collect large-scale temporally dense behavioral data in real-world settings. In addition, I have built open-source tools to perform multi-level modeling and annotation on high-frequency longitudinal mobile data.

My research has been published in peer-reviewed competitive venues including ACM IMWUT (UbiComp), CSCW, IUI, WebSci, CHI PLAY, IEEE PerComm, NeurIPS Workshops, Behavior Research Methods, Journal of Medical Internet Research, and Translational Behavior Medicine. In addition, my work is featured in media including VentureBeat and Northeastern Global News.

I am always excited about new product-oriented research opportunities.

Publications

Peer-reviewed journal and conference publications. Here, { ^* } indicates equal contributions by the authors.

2024

Julie Jiang, Aditya Ponnada, Ang Li, Ben Lacker, and Sam F Way. 2024. A Genre-Based Analysis of New Music Streaming at Scale. ACM WebSci’24. link

2023

Yu Liang, Aditya Ponnada, Paul Lamere, and Nediyana Daskalova. 2023. Enabling Goal-Focused Exploration of Podcasts in Interactive Recommender Systems. ACM IUI’23. link

Chow, S. M., Nahum-Shani, I., Baker, J. T., Spruijt-Metz, D., Allen, N. B., Auerbach, R. P., … & Intensive Longitudinal Health Behavior Network (ILHBN) Bodovski Yosef Wang Shirlene Kaslander Jonathan Chu Daniel Ponnada Aditya Braga De Braganca Rebecca Schloesser Dana Chi Guanqing Rivera Daniel Liebenthal Einat. (2023). The ILHBN: challenges, opportunities, and solutions from harmonizing data under heterogeneous study designs, target populations, and measurement protocols. Translational behavioral medicine. link.

2022

Aditya Ponnada, Jixin Li, Shirlene Wang, Wei-Lin Wang, Bridgette Do, Genevieve F. Dunton, and Stephen S. Intille. 2022. Contextual Biases in Microinteraction Ecological Momentary Assessment (μEMA) Non-response. ACM IMWUT’22 [ Distinguished Paper Award ]. link

Rithika Lakshminarayanan, Alexandra Canori, Aditya Ponnada, Melissa Nunn, Mary Schmidt Read, Shivayogi V. Hiremath, and Stephen Intille. 2022. Exploring Opportunities to Improve Physical Activity in Individuals with Spinal Cord Injury Using Context-Aware Messaging. ACM CSCW’22. link

Aditya Ponnada, Shirlene Wang, Daniel Chu, Bridgette Do, Genevieve Dunton, and Stephen Intille. Intensive Longitudinal Data Collection using Microinteraction Ecological Momentary Assessment (μEMA): Pilot and Preliminary Results. JMIR Formative Research’22. link

Yi, L., Wang, S. D., Chu, D., Ponnada, A., Intille, S. S., & Dunton, G. F. (2022). Examining whether physical activity location choices were associated with weekly physical activity maintenance across 13 months of the COVID-19 pandemic in emerging adults. Journal of Physical Activity and Health’22. link

Wang S, Intille S, Ponnada A, Do B, Rothman A, Dunton G. Investigating Microtemporal Processes Underlying Health Behavior Adoption and Maintenance: Protocol for an Intensive Longitudinal Observational Study. JMIR Research Protocols’22. link

Dunton, G. F., Wang, W. L., Intille, S. S., Dzubur, E., Ponnada, A., & Hedeker, D. (2022). How acute affect dynamics impact longitudinal changes in physical activity among children. Journal of Behavioral Medicine’22. link

2021

Aditya Ponnada, Binod Thapa-Chhetry, Justin Manjourides, and Stephen Intille. Measuring Criterion Validity of Microinteraction Ecological Momentary Assessment (Micro-EMA): Exploratory Pilot Study with Physical Activity Measurement. JMIR Mhealth Uhealth’21. link

Chih-Hsiang Yang, Jaclyn P Maher, Aditya Ponnada, Eldin Dzubur, Rachel Nordgren, Stephen Intille, Donald Hedeker, Genevieve F Dunton. An empirical example of analysis using a two-stage modeling approach: within-subject association of outdoor context and physical activity predicts future daily physical activity levels. Translational Behavioral Medicine’21. link

2020

Dzubur, E., Ponnada, A., Nordgren, R., Yang, C-H., Intille, S. S., Dunton, G. F., & Hedeker, D., (2020). MixWILD: A program for examining the effects of variance and slope of time-varying variables in intensive longitudinal data. Behavior Research Methods’20. link

2019

Aditya Ponnada, Seth Cooper, Binod Thapa-Chhetry, Josh Aaron Miller, Dinesh John, and Stephen Intille. 2019. Designing Videogames to Crowdsource Accelerometer Data Annotation for Activity Recognition Research. ACM CHI PLAY’19. link

2017

Farnaz Irannejad Bisafar, Aditya Ponnada, Ameneh Shamekhi, and Andrea G. Parker. 2017. A Sociotechnical Study of a Community-based Rewards Program: Insights on Building Social, Financial and Human Capital. ACM CSCW’17. link

Aditya Ponnada, Caitlin Haynes, Dharam Maniar, Justin Manjourides, and Stephen Intille. 2017. Microinteraction ecological momentary assessment response rates: Effect of microinteractions or the smartwatch? ACM IMWUT’17. link

2016

Stephen Intille, Caitlin Haynes, Dharam Maniar, Aditya Ponnada, and Justin Manjourides. 2016. μEMA: Microinteraction-based ecological momentary assessment (EMA) using a smartwatch. ACM UbiComp’16. link

Sanjay Ghosh, Sarita Seshagiri, and Aditya Ponnada. 2016. Exploring Regional User Experience for Designing Ultra Low-Cost Smart Phones. ACM CHI EA’16. link

2013

Verberne, F. M., Ham, J., Ponnada, A., & Midden, C. J. (2013). Trusting digital chameleons: The effect of mimicry by a virtual social agent on user trust. PERSUASIVE’13 [ Best Paper Award ]. link

2012

Ponnada, A., Ketan, K. V., & Yammiyavar, P. (2012, December). A Persuasive game for the social development of children in Indian cultural context—A Human-Computer Interaction design approach. Intelligent HCI’12. link

Ponnada, A., & Kannan, A. (2012, August). Evaluation of mobile games using playability heuristics. ICACCI’12. link

Peer-reviewed workshops

Aditya Ponnada, Seth Cooper, Qu Tang, Binod Thapa-Chhetry, Josh Miller, Dinesh John, and Stephen Intille. (2021, March). Signaligner Pro: A Tool to Explore and Annotate Multi-day Raw Accelerometer Data. IEEE PerCom’21 (Workshops). link

Qu Tang, Aditya Ponnada, Stephen Intille. 2020. Towards Personal Hand Hygiene Detection in Free-living Using Wearable Devices. Machine Learning for Mobile Health Workshop at NeurIPS’20. [ Selected for spotlight presentation ]. link

Dissertation

Aditya Ponnada (2021). Measuring Subjective Experiences using Wearable Microinteractions. Northeastern University, Boston, MA. Thesis committee: Prof. Stephen Intille (Northeastern University), Prof. Genevieve Dunton (University of Southern California), Prof. Matthew Goodwin (Northeastern University), and Prof. Justin Manjourides (Northeastern University). link