Ryan Beck

Email: ryan.beck@bristol.ac.uk

Project title: FORM: Forecasting Mood from Multilevel Representations of Wearable, Ecological, and Psychometric Data. 

Supervisory team: Dr Hanna Isotalus, Dr James Pope, Dr Dalila O’Grady, and Dr Nikolai Bode

 

Project summary

My PhD project centres around the differing roles of traditional and digital tools for monitoring and predicting mood in students. Mood is a clinically relevant construct, performing well as an efficient proxy measure for mental health and wellbeing at large. Moreover, it is closely tied to behavioural and physiological patterns such as sleep, activity, and energy — all of which can now be measured passively through wearable technology.

Using a smartwatch-style, research-grade wearable equipped with accelerometry, photoplethysmography (PPG), and skin temperature sensors, we’ll be tracking physiological and behavioural signals continuously over a month-long period. During this time, our participants will also report on various components of their mood multiple times a day using Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA), a method that captures in-the-moment emotional states via mobile notifications.

The aim is to match changes in behaviour and physiology with fluctuations in mood, and to explore whether machine learning can be used to forecast short- to medium-term mood patterns. Alongside this, participants will be completing a combination of validated mental health questionnaires - many of which reflect the kinds of tools commonly used in therapeutic settings, while others are informed by emerging psychological frameworks. This blend allows us to anchor our modelling in established practice while also exploring dimensions of mental health that may sit outside traditional diagnostic boundaries.

Where possible, we will then seek to gather insights from our sample towards the wider goals of our project and the CDT: the development of person-centred digital mental health supports that respond to real-world needs and day-to-day lived experience.

 

Bio

Choosing a BSc. in Psychology at Queens University Belfast (2014-2017) was a bit of a shot in the dark; I knew I wanted to help people with my career but wasn't sure how. After graduation this morphed into a job within the community mental health sector, where I worked for 6 years and began to develop a much clearer, more deliberate path for my career. We operated at the intersection of housing, complex mental health challenges, problematic substance use and forensic histories, and the experience was a principle inspiration for my eventual MSc. in Applied Psychology & Mental Health Therapies from Ulster University (2021).

For all the value I found working in person-to-person services, I was keenly on the lookout for pathways that would encourage greater compound impact of effort. This brought me to University of Bristol’s Digital Health and Care CDT, wherein the partnering of novel digital modalities has enabled me to view research and service provision in a totally different light.

 

Research and activity

Johnson, H., Beck, R., Li, W., Pateman, A., & Sediqi, K. M. (2025, May). A Synthesis of Reflections, Attitudes and Suggestions Towards Mindful Implementation of LLMs in Digital First Pathways. In International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 22-48). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.

Bullock, S., Isotalus, H. K., Joshi, A., Avdic, D., & Beck, R. R. (2025, June). When Perception is not Reality: Misalignment between Self-Reported Metacognitive Ability and Academic Performance in University Students. In SEFi Annual Conference. European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI).

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