Merve Cerit

Merve is a PhD candidate in Learning Sciences and Technology Design at Stanford University, where she develops human-centered AI systems to better understand and support mental health in everyday digital life. Her research sits at the intersection of computational social science, media psychology, and digital health—focusing on person-specific models that map the relationship between smartphone use patterns and mental health trajectories. She leads the Media Content Atlas project, an AI-powered platform that clusters and analyzes over a million smartphone screenshots using multimodal models. Previously, she worked on early warning systems for cancer patients and built industrial AI solutions at Microsoft. Outside of research, Merve enjoys designing playful data visualizations, teaching, traveling, and freediving.