Team

Creators:

• Lee Ritterband, Ph.D., Principal Investigator, Clinical Psychologist
  Dr. Ritterband is the Jean and Ronald Butcher Eminent Scholars Professor at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and Director of the Center for Behavioral Health and Technology. He has served as Principal Investigator on a number of National Institutes of Health grants focused on SHUTi. With degrees in clinical psychology and computer technology, Dr. Ritterband specializes in the development and testing of behaviorally-based treatment programs delivered via the Web. Over the past two decades, Dr. Ritterband has established himself as one of the leading researchers in Internet health interventions. He has been a Principal or Co-Investigator on large research projects funded by multiple institutes of the National Institutes of Health; the National Health and Medical Research Council (Australia); National Science Foundation; the American Diabetes Association; and various US State and commercial entities. In 2004, he co-founded the International Society for Research on Internet interventions which is the leading international organization focused on Internet intervention research. Dr. Ritterband is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and the Society of Behavioral Medicine, and a past editor of the journals Health Psychology and the Journal of Medical Internet Research, the leading health informatics journal. He has given numerous talks nationally and internationally on the use of the Internet in psychological research and clinical practice. Dr. Ritterband is also a co-founder of BeHealth Solutions, LLC, a company dedicated to increasing public access to evidence-based Internet delivered health interventions, and a consultant to Pear Therapeutics and Mahana Therapeutics, two companies focused on digital health.
• Linda Gonder-Frederick, Ph.D., Clinical Psychologist
  Dr. Gonder-Frederick is an Associate Professor Emertis in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences and former Clinical and Training Director of the Behavioral Medicine Center at the University of Virginia Health System which houses the Insomnia Clinic. She is an expert in treating individuals with insomnia using CBT-I and served on the Sleep Medicine board at UVA. In addition, Dr. Gonder-Frederick was a key co-investigator on the initial SHUTi pilot study and the large-scale randomized clinical trial of SHUTi recently completed. She has been an integral member of the larger BHT Internet intervention research team, providing content, study design/methodology, and implementation expertise. Dr. Gonder-Frederick has participated in the development of several other internet interventions and was a co-investigator on the American Diabetes Association funded Blood Glucose Awareness Training Internet intervention (BGATHome) project as well as the subsequent translation of BGAT to an intervention for women with type 1 diabetes who are anticipating or experiencing pregnancy (Bump2be), the NICHD funded pediatric encopresis Internet intervention projects, and the nationwide clinical trial of the Driving with Diabetes Internet Intervention (DD.com).
• Charles Morin, Ph.D., DABSM, Clinical Psychologist
  Dr. Morin is a Professor of Psychology at Laval University in Quebec City, Canada, and Director of the Sleep Research Center. He holds the Canada Research Chair in Behavioral Sleep Medicine and is currently President of the World Sleep Society. He has directed an active clinical research program on insomnia over the past 30 years, and has been funded continuously by the National Institutes of Health since 1988. Dr. Morin is one of the foremost experts in the field of insomnia, and has particular expertise in Cognitive Behavioral Treatment (CBT) for insomnia. He is an associate editor for two prominent journals in the field, Sleep and Behavioral Sleep Medicine, and has published 6 books and over 250 articles and book chapters. Dr. Morin has collaborated with the Behavioral Health and Technology team at UVA since 2003. The SHUTi Internet intervention is based on Dr. Morin’s CBT program for insomnia.
• Frances Thorndike, Ph.D., Clinical Psychologist
  Dr. Thorndike is committed to developing, evaluating and disseminating interventions which utilize technology to improve health outcomes. Until 2016, Dr. Thorndike was a faculty member at the University of Virginia Health System in the Behavioral Health and Technology program area. At that time, she became Chief Science Officer of BeHealth Solutions, a company formed to broadly disseminate the technology-based interventions shown to improve health. And, in 2018, she joined Pear Therapeutics to help make SHUTi more widely available. She obtained her PhD in clinical psychology in 2004 from American University and then completed a three-year fellowship at the University of Virginia Health System, focusing on the use of technology to extend the reach of proven behavioral interventions. Her research interests include the development and evaluation of Internet interventions for various medical and behavioral health problems, including insomnia, post-traumatic stress, cancer, encopresis, and diabetes. She has been conducting research in the field of Internet interventions since 2002 and working on research related to SHUTi since 2004.

Other Investigators:

• Karen Ingersoll, Ph.D., Clinical Psychologist
  Dr. Ingersoll is a clinical health psychologist and Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia. She has led projects funded by CDC, NIMH, NIDA, and NIAAA. Dr. Ingersoll has over 2 decades as a clinical psychologist and behavioral scientist developing and evaluating psychological and medical interventions for people with medical conditions complicated by behavioral health challenges such as insomnia, pain, alcohol use, medication nonadherence, and barriers to treatment such as rural location, difficulty accessing care, and poverty. For the last decade, Dr. Ingersoll has tested using technology to reach more people who need access to effective care, including several SHUTi projects.
• Wendy Cohn, Ph.D.
  Dr. Cohn is an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences in the Divisions of Clinical Informatics and Public Health Practice at the University of Virginia Health System. Her main areas of expertise and interest are in program evaluation, outcomes research, public health, epidemiology, and qualitative research.
• Mark Quigg, M.D.
  Dr. Quigg is a Professor in the Department of Neurology at the University of Virginia. He is also the medical director of the combined EEG, Evoked Potential, and Intensive Epilepsy Monitoring Laboratories as well as director of the Neurological Sleep Laboratories at the University of Virginia. He is co-chair of the Research and Training Council of the American Epilepsy Society. His incorporation of neurology into the pulmonary-based sleep laboratory at the University of Virginia was a key factor in the accreditation of the Sleep Center at the University of Virginia. His clinical practice encompasses epilepsy and sleep, with emphasis on epilepsy surgery in the former and sleep-associated consequences of neurological disease in the latter. His clinical research experience in reference to sleep medicine has been in the associations among sleep/insomnia, circadian regulation, and epilepsy.
• Mudhasir Bashir, M.D.
  Dr. Bashir is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences, Medical Director of Inpatient Psychiatry at the University of Virginia Health System, and Program Director for Geriatric Psychiatry. Dr. Bashir has significant clinical experience providing medical management of older adults who present with comorbid sleep and psychiatric complaints. In addition to working primarily as a clinician, Dr. Bashir has also published on treating older adult women in psychiatric settings. Along with her medical training as a physician, Dr. Bashir also completed training in behavioral medicine under the guidance of Linda Gonder-Frederick, PhD, where she learned the cognitive-behavioral treatment techniques for insomnia.

Instructional Designer:

• Michelle Hilgart, M.Ed., Ph.D.
  Dr. Hilgart is an experienced instructional designer and researcher. She has a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin (1993), a master's degree in Educational Psychology from the University of Virginia (2004), and a doctoral degree in Instructional Sciences and Technology from the University of Virginia (2013). For the past decade, Dr. Hilgart has contributed to the development of internet interventions to improve health outcomes for populations with insomnia, spinal cord injury, type 1 diabetes, and cancer. She coordinated the iSHIFTup project and study for adults with spinal cord injury, funded by the Virginia Commonwealth Neurotrauma Initiative. Dr. Hilgart has a strong interest in the application of instructional design models in the development of internet interventions for health behavior change.

Project Coordinators:

• Christina Frederick, B.S.
  Ms. Frederick joined the Center for Behavioral Health and Technology team in 2012 as the project coordinator for the Sleep Healthy Using the Internet (SHUTi) national clinical trial using cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia delivered over the internet. She obtained her B.S. in Secondary Education/Chemistry from the Pennsylvania State University in 1990. Over the years she has worked as a project leader for Arbitron, a leading media research firm, and as a consumer product testing clinic coordinator at the Gillette Research Institute. Other internet interventions she has provided project coordination include an intervention designed to reduce the risk of alcohol exposed pregnancy (CARRII), an intervention to help women with type 1 diabetes manage their blood glucose levels in preparation for pregnancy (Bump2be), and an intervention to improve ART adherence for people living with HIV (Pos4Health).

• Kirsten MacDonnell, B.A.
  Ms. MacDonnell is a Research Coordinator at the Center for Behavioral Health and Technology, in the Psychiatry & Neurobehavioral Sciences department of the University of Virginia’s School of Medicine. Kirsten earned her B.A. in Psychology from the University of Virginia in 2011. Kirsten joined the CBHT team in November 2014 as the Research Coordinator for the CARRII project which aimed to reduce alcohol-exposed pregnancies among high-risk women. In addition to other projects, she is the Research Coordinator for the Pos4Health Study testing the effectiveness of an Internet Intervention for people living with HIV to better adhere to their medication and live a healthy lifestyle. Before joining the team, Kirsten first worked in the Human Resources department for Wolverine Advanced Materials, an automotive manufacturing company in Blacksburg, VA and as Project Coordinator for the Healthy Beginnings Project in the Psychology Department of The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, VA. The Healthy Beginnings Project worked specifically with incarcerated pregnant women in Virginia and aimed to improve birth outcomes through nutrition and wellness counseling.

Application Developers:

• Gabe Heath
• Steve Johnson
• Nicole Le

Consultants:

• Eric Finkelstein, Ph.D.

Contractors:

• Brendan Murphy
• Pete Yadlowsky
• Silverthorn Films

Administration (2024):

• Cynthia Orange
• Gail Billingsley