Bio

In a time where social interactions increasingly include or depend upon technology, Jessica Pater investigates the ways that social computing affects our well-being. Pater is a research associate with a shared appointment between the Center for 21st Century Universities and the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), and is affiliated with the GVU Center and Institute for People and Technology. Her research focuses on the characterization of non-suicidal self-injury and self-harm within a social computing context. Specifically, she studies the presentations of eating disorders online within adolescent populations. She currently explores how diagnostic tools can capture social computing activities, allowing healthcare professionals to better understand the breadth and depth of the digital contexts of a patient's mental disease.