Lizbeth ‘Libby’ Benson, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Data Science for Dynamic Intervention Decision Making Center (d3c) at the University of Michigan’s Survey Research Center and Institute for Social Research. Before moving to Michigan, Libby completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the TSET Health Promotion Research Center within the NCI-designated Stephenson Cancer Center and University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. She received her PhD from the Pennsylvania State University in the department of Human Development and Family Studies and her BA in Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Libby’s research program is focused on intensive longitudinal, computational, and machine learning methods for examining temporal dynamics of affective, social and health behavior experiences using ecological momentary assessment and sensor-based data collected from individuals in their daily lives. Her goals are to understand how behavioral processes unfold across multiple time-scales and contexts, and how this knowledge can be used to build personalized interventions to facilitate health behavior change. Data visualization is also an important component of her work as a way to better understand complex behavioral processes, to generate new ideas, and to use as a tool for scientific communication. Currently, Libby is writing a NIH K01 focused on developing a reinforcement learning algorithm for personalizing intervention content in a smoking cessation just-in-time adaptive intervention.