Joining the UCSF TECH Lab

Thanks for your interest in joining the UCSF TECH Lab! The "TECH" stands for "Technologies Empowering Community and Consumer Health". This is an exciting time make a tangible and ideally significant impact in community and consumer digital health informatics. There are a plethora of challenges and corresponding opportunities in this burgeoning field, and I am excited to train the next generation of consumer digital health researchers. Students from underrepresented and disadvantaged backgrounds and life experiences are especially encouraged to apply!

Below, I list how to work with me in each capacity. Please read the below carefully to see what the active opportunities are. Note that availabilities under each category below are continuously changing. If there is not currently an opportunity, please check back in 6 months. I am actively pursuing additional grant opportunities to expand our team and research capabilities. In short, for 2026 I only have positions open for already-funded PhD, postdoc, residency, and fellowship positions as well as rotation PhD students focused on spending a rotation applying to fellowships. We are at capacity for 2026 and cannot accept new external volunteers.

Clinical Informatics Fellows: If you have completed medical school and have been accepted to UCSF's Clinical Informatics Fellowship (CIF), I would be happy to be your primary mentor if you have an interest in expanding your research portfolio into consumer digital health informatics. The Clinical Informatics Fellowship at UCSF is a two year program for physicians who have successfully completed any ACGME/ABMS residency and who wish to develop and advance a professional and primary interest in informatics. The UCSF CIF seeks to train physicians who will go on to become leaders in their specialty as well as in the specialty of informatics, advancing their own work while also becoming invaluable resources and collaborators for their peers. Formal education or significant experience in computer science is helpful but not required. Fellows will either arrive or leave with the necessary CS expertise. I am happy to work with promising Fellows at all levels of prior experience; I have many possible projects spanning various skillsets.​

Postdoctoral Researchers: I do not currently have open postdoc positions at this time. However, if you have external funding (e.g., an existing postdoc fellowship, are a UCSF resident/fellow, or are part of the National Clinician Scholars Program (NCSP) at UCSF), then we have an open position for you.

Residents and Fellows: We always have open positions for UCSF residents and fellows wanting to build a research portfolio!

Medical Students: We regularly post projects for UCSF medical students, for example via the Visit-a-Mentor program.

PhD Students: I am not currently directly admitting new PhD students without a fellowship, though I will in the future when I get more funding. However, if you have a PhD fellowship, then I am happy to discuss being your PhD mentor, and I am also happy to host PhD students already admitted to UCSF who want to spend a rotation focusing on fellowship applications. I can be the primary advisor for PhD students in the UCSF PhD Program in Biological and Medical Informatics (BMI) and the UC Berkeley - UCSF Joint PhD Program in Computational Precision Health, as well as co-advise students who identify a primary mentor/advisor in Hawaii through University of Hawaii's PhD Programs in Computer Science or Communication and Information Sciences. If you are already accepted into one of these programs and are interested in rotating with me, then we can spend the duration of your rotation working together on competitive PhD fellowship applications, where I will teach you how to write competitive grants, and those skills are directly transferrable to PhD fellowships. Since you have 3 rotations at UCSF, spending 1 of your 3 on learning how to write a competitive research fellowship could be a good learning experience and potentially very fruitful. If you are about to enter your first year of the PhD program, please reach out! This is especially useful for the Fall rotation. If you do not have a fellowship and are interested in a "direct admit" option, then in order to de-risk the admissions process for both of us, significant preference for admission will be given to students who have successfully worked with me prior to their PhD application through one of the avenues listed below:​

University of Hawaii Master's Students: For University of Hawaii MS students in the Computer Science program, I can co-advise your Plan A thesis in collaboration with a professor in the department, many of whom I am actively collaborating with.

Stanford Master's Students: We periodically work with many Master's students at Stanford for course credit through the ICME Xplore program (CME 291) and Applied Data Science (CME 218).

UC Berkeley Undergraduate Students: For UC Berkeley undergraduate students in particular, we periodically post undergraduate research for course credit via the UC Berkeley URAP program, which is closely partnered with UCSF to provide health-related research opportunities to UC Berkeley students.

Master's, Undergraduate, and High School Students at Other Schools: We are at capacity and not accepting new external master's, undergraduate, or high school students at this time.

Volunteers: We are at capacity and not accepting new volunteers at this time.

Industry Collaboration: I am always open to funded industry collaboration and have a track record of consulting and scientific advisory engagements.

Academic Collaboration: I am happy to discuss funded collaboration opportunities. I am happy to be a Co-Investigator on grant applications. My team and I can provide expertise in: health website development, health mobile app development, data analysis for wearable data, machine learning model development, and human-centered AI.