With the help of Faculty, a group of students came in second place in the "Addiction Research: There's an App for That" Challenge. Faculty mentors include Pedja Klasnja, Susan Murphy, Ambuj Tewari, Maureen Walton and advise from Andra Geana. The group consisted of undergraduate students; Steven Zeng, Amy Afonso, Joshua Song, Wan-Ting Lin and master’s student Andy Lee. Together the group created the application SARA: Substance Abuse Research Assistant.


The challenge, hosted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), was to create a mobile app that can be used by addiction researchers to better understand drug use and addiction. The app is intended to allow for a large and diverse group of voluntary study participants. Each app was judged on the following criteria:


• The quality and uniqueness of the design plan
• How ‘ResearchKit’ (an open-source software kit) materials were incorporated and advanced through the app
• The utilization and application of ‘add-apters’
• Legal compliance to federal, state, local and institutional policies
• The ability of the app to attract and maintain participation
• How well the app will retain subjects and store data
• Creating easy and long term usage for both researchers and participants.
• Appropriate and clear analysis of data for researchers to interpret

Coming in second place, the group recieved a monetary prize.


For more information on the challenge, please visit the NIDA Challenge website.
 

Steven Zeng and Joshua Song presenting SARA

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