Veronica Tozzo, PhD, a researcher with the UCLA Depression Grand Challenge, has been awarded funding by the Huo Family Foundation to study how patterns of smartphone and smartwatch use relate to depression and anxiety in young adults. She is one of only four junior faculty researchers from the US and UK to secure funding through HFF’s call for proposals focused on the impact of digital technology on young people, according to the foundation’s Jan. 21, 2026 award announcement.
Tozzo’s project will draw on the unprecedented dataset generated by the UCLA-Apple Digital Mental Health Study, which engaged 1,800 consenting young adults over a 12-month period. Using digital sensors in iPhone and Apple Watch, DMHS researchers captured near continuous data streams of measures like sleep, activity, heart rate, and time in daylight, while simultaneously conducting regular assessments of depression and anxiety symptoms.
Tozzo’s research team will use deep learning to detect real-world patterns of device use across contexts — for example, grouping people who primarily use their phone for communication separately from those who mainly use it to listen to music, and further differentiating between those who listen to music in the morning and those who do so at night.
The team will then analyze these groups to examine how distinct patterns of device usage relate to depression and anxiety symptoms over time.
Ultimately, this project seeks to deepen understanding of how device use and mental health are linked for young people, thereby contributing to the advancement of the field of digital sensing for mental health research.
Visit the Huo Family Foundation website to learn more about this award.
The Huo Family Foundation was established in 2009 with the mission to support education, communities and the pursuit of knowledge. Its current areas of focus are education, the arts, and science. Through its donations, the Foundation hopes to improve the prospects of individuals, and to support the work of organizations seeking to ensure a safe and successful future for all society. Since 2009, the Foundation has pledged over $100 million to support projects in the UK, US and China.
