Isabella Sarmiento Ramirez
PhD Student
Isa is a PhD student in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London, funded by the UKRI AI for Health Centre for Doctoral Training. She holds a BSc in Neuroscience from University College London and an MSc in Translational Neuroscience from Imperial College London. Co-supervised by Professor Faisal and Dr Martina Di Simplicio, her research sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence and mental health. She focuses on the use of large language models and digital phenotyping to deliver timely, personalised mental health support through mobile technologies.
Research Brief
Difficulties in emotion regulation present a major challenge for mental health care. Many individuals struggle to recognise patterns in mood and emotion as they unfold in daily life, or to link these experiences to factors such as sleep, behaviour, and environmental stressors. While traditional therapeutic techniques can be effective, they are often hard to recall and apply outside clinical settings, resulting in slow and inefficient trial-and-error learning. My research aims to address these challenges by developing a personalised, AI-guided intervention delivered via the MindCraft smartphone app. By integrating real-time behavioural and self-reported data with language-based modelling, my work seeks to support emotion regulation skills in adolescents and young adults experiencing mild-to-moderate mental health difficulties, delivering clinically informed support at the moments it is most needed.