Ellen McGinnis, PhD

Dr. McGinnis is a Clinical Child Psychologist whose research program is dedicated to advancing pediatric mental health through the development and evaluation of digital health tools. Her work is grounded in the belief that emotional health assessment and intervention must be both scientifically rigorous and practically accessible. As the Principal Investigator of an NIH K23 Award (MH123031), she has pioneered the use of wearable sensors and smartphones to develop digital phenotypes of anxiety and depression in children, improving diagnostic accuracy and tracking symptom progression. Her translational research bridges clinical psychology, biomedical engineering, and digital health innovation, with a focus on creating scalable tools that meet the real-world needs of children, families, and clinicians.   Dr. McGinnis’s research trajectory was shaped by critical gaps she encountered both as a scientist and a practicing therapist. In her early work on childhood psychopathology, she recognized the limitations of traditional behavioral coding for assessing internalizing symptoms in young children. Collaborating with biomedical engineers, she introduced Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) to objectively capture motion data, laying the foundation for BioBee, an mHealth app that collects motion and vocal biomarkers to model diagnostic likelihood. Simultaneously, her clinical experience treating panic disorder inspired the development of PanicMechanic, a smartphone-based biofeedback app that delivers just-in-time interventions using heart rate data. Both tools have been supported by NSF I-Corps programs, where she gained expertise in product development, stakeholder engagement, and user-centered design—skills that now inform every stage of her research.   With over 45 peer-reviewed publications and more than 3,000 citations, Dr. McGinnis has established herself as a leader in digital mental health innovation. She has co-founded two companies focused on passive data collection for mental health, and her work has been featured in WIRED, Mashable, and Slate. She was selected as an NIH scholar for the Mobile Health Technology Institute (mHTI) and the Coaching and Resources for Entrepreneurial Women (CREW) program in 2024. Her research spans from peripartum women to young children through adolescence and emphasizes mixed-methods evaluation, iterative design, and cross-disciplinary collaboration. Dr. McGinnis is committed to ensuring that mHealth tools are not only evidence-based but also meaningfully integrated into pediatric care, with a long-term vision of empowering clinicians and families through accessible, data-driven solutions.