About
Our mission is to address the worldwide mental health crisis, with an initial focus on university students by helping campus counseling center staff leverage cutting-edge research on the use of scalable digital interventions to get the right treatments to the right students.
We have integrated best-in-class evidence-based digital interventions from leading clinical researchers around the world into an integrated system that campus counseling center staff can use to get the right treatments to the right students right away, monitor student progress efficiently to make timely evidence-based changes when needed, and optimize clinic staff resources to improve student outcomes.
We apply best-practices precision medicine machine learning modeling methods to data from rigorous randomized clinical trials to develop precision treatment rules. These rules optimally match students to the scalable digital treatments that are most likely to help them. Matching is based on a rich baseline assessment of student presenting problems, strengths, and needs. Online intake assessments with embedded machine learning modeling recommendations are used to help clinic staff make optimal intervention assignments. Ongoing digital assessments Integrated into a symptom tracking dashboard are then used to help clinic staff monitor symptom progression and make decisions about switching, stepping care up or down, and discharge.
About our Name
Menssano comes from two Latin words, “Mens” meaning “mind” and “Sano” meaning “to heal”.
Founders
Geoff Gill, Founder and CEO
Geoff Gill is a serial entrepreneur who has spent the last 15 years in working in the areas of neuroscience, wearables, and digital health. Most recently, he was the CEO of Verisense Health, a digital health company that provides services and wearable sensors to the clinical trials market. It also developed a digital biobank that contained digital health data on more than one million people. Prior to that he was the President of Shimmer Americas, a wearable sensor company that provides wearable sensors to the research market for developing healthcare applications.
In other roles, he has been a CFO, SVP of Operations, VP R&D, head of Sales and Marketing, Product Manager, and Data Scientist. He has delivered results for companies from startups to multinational conglomerates.
Comfortable with both technology and business, Geoff has helped companies for more than 20 years as a management consultant and a mentor with MIT’s Venture Mentoring Service.
He has an AB in Applied Math and Physics from Harvard and a MS in Management of Technology from the MIT Sloan School.
Check out his full background on LinkedIn:
Ron Kessler, Founder
Ronald C. Kessler, PhD, is the McNeil Family Professor of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Kessler’s research deals broadly with the social determinants of mental health and illness as studied from an epidemiological perspective. He is the author of over 1,000 publications and the recipient of many awards for his research, including the Senior Scientist and MERIT Awards from the National Institute of Mental Health. He has been rated as the most widely cited researcher in the world in the field of psychiatry for many years. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Dr. Kessler is the principal investigator of the US National Comorbidity Survey, the first nationally representative survey of the prevalence and correlates of mental disorders in the U.S., a number of NCS replications, and the World Mental Health Survey Initiative, a series of comparative community epidemiological surveys of the prevalence and correlates of mental disorders and treatment for these disorders in 30 countries around the world. Dr. Kessler is also the principal investigator of the Harvard Medical School site for Army STARRS-LS, a program of epidemiological and neurobiological research on risk and protective factors for suicide among Army personnel and the AURORA study of adverse neuropsychiatric reactions to traumatic life events among patients presenting to emergency departments in the wake of such events. In addition to his epidemiological studies, Kessler is involved in evaluating several innovative programs for the prevention and treatment of mental illness in high-risk segments of the population. Much of the latter work involves searching for heterogeneity of treatment effects (HTE) and developing machine learning Precision Treatment Rules (PTRs) when HTE is found to determine which treatments are best for which patients.
Kessler earned his PhD in sociology from New York University in 1975. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in psychiatric epidemiology at the University of Wisconsin before joining the faculty at the University of Michigan in 1979. He was a professor of sociology and a program director at Michigan’s Institute for Social Research at the time he took his current position at Harvard Medical School in 1994.
A full description of Dr. Kessler's research can be found on his Harvard Scholar website.
Consultants and Collaborators
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John Torous
Consultant, Digital Implementation
Director, Division of Digital Psychiatry, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston
Dr. Torous is the developer of mindLAMP, the neuropsychiatric digital research and clinical care platform that Menssano uses to support their digital solutions. Torous leads the American Psychiatric Association working group for the evaluation of smartphone apps. He is the author of 300+ peer-reviewed articles. He is Editor-in-Chief of JMIR Mental Health, a leading journal on digital mental health, and Web Editor for JAMA Psychiatry. Torous is also a member of the FDA Digital Health Advisory Committee.
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Sergio Aguilar-Gaxiol
Professor of Clinical Internal Medicine, School of Medicine, University of California, Davis
Dr. Aguilar-Gaxiol is the Founder and Director of the Center for Reducing Health Disparities at UC Davis Health and the Director of the Community Engagement Program of the UCD Clinical Translational Science Center (CTSC). He collaborates with Menssano on research programs.
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Yasmin Altwaijri
Senior Scientist and Head of Epidemiology Research, King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center
Dr. Altwaijri collaborates with Harvard University and the World Health Organization to lead the Saudi National Health and Stress Survey. She is also leading the effort to bring Menssano technology to Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Middle East and North Africa.
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Joe Behen
Dean of the Wellness Center at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC)
Dr. Behen has guided SAIC's participation in several national, collaborative efforts addressing college student mental health, including the Bringing Theory to Practice Project, the National College Depression Partnership, the Healthy Minds Study, and a NIMH-funded study of Mental Health First Aid. He has been the PI of two SAMHSA Campus Suicide Prevention grants. He advises Menssano on the needs of college students and mental health clinics.
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Corina Benjet
Professor, Graduate School of Psychology, National University of Mexico
Dr. Benjet is currently a researcher at the National Institute of Psychiatry (Instituto Nacional de Psiquiatría) in Mexico City in the Department of Epidemiological and Psychosocial Research. Through her work at the National Institute of Psychiatry in Mexico City, Dr. Benjet leads an initiative to evaluate the effects of the scalable digital interventions in the Menssano suite on the mental health of university students across a range of Latin American countries.
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Kate Bentley
Assistant Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry, Mass General Hospital (MGH) / Harvard Medical School
Dr. Bentley is Director of the Suicide Prevention Research Program in the Center for Precision Psychiatry at MGH and a licensed clinical psychologist. Her research is focused on improving the ability to understand and predict suicidal and self-injurious thoughts and behaviors, and using this information to guide the development, testing, and implementation of scalable, evidence-based psychological interventions. She advises Menssano on clinical issues and life skills training.
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Mollie Herman
Director, Towson University Counseling Center
Dr. Herman directs the Counseling Center at Towson University. She brings over 30 years of leadership experience to her role, having previously served as the Center’s longstanding Training Director, where she shaped the professional development of countless emerging psychologists. She is advising Menssano on the needs of college students and mental health clinics.
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Lorenzo Lorenzo-Luaces
Associate Professor, Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University
Dr. Lorenzo-Luaces’ research is at the intersection of psychotherapy, technology (e.g., social media, internet-based treatments), and data science. His team has conducted several nationwide trials of internet-based treatments for depression and anxiety. He is advising Menssano on research on mental health needs and solutions for college students.
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Alex Luedtke
Associate Professor in Department of Statistics, University of Washington
Dr. Luedtke also has an adjunct appointment in the Department of Biostatistics. Dr. Luedtke is a leading applied statistician in the development of methods to develop efficient estimators for problems arising in a variety of policy learning areas. He is a key collaborator with Menssano in developing and refining individualized treatment rules.
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Matt Nock
Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology, Department Chair, Harvard University
Professor Nock’s research is aimed at advancing the understanding why people behave in ways that are harmful to themselves, with an emphasis on suicide and other forms of self-harm. He collaborates with Menssano on research and advises on statistical analysis.
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Miriam Nuño
Professor, Division of Biostatistics, University of California, Davis
Dr. Nuño is an accomplished researcher with over 160 peer-reviewed publications and deep expertise in advanced statistical methodologies, including multivariable modeling, clustered longitudinal study designs, observational studies, and big data analytics. She collaborates with Menssano on research programs and statistical analysis.
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Stephen Schueller
Professor of Psychological Science and Informatics at the University of California, Irvine
In his research Dr. Schueller develops, evaluates, and implements digital mental health assessments and interventions including Internet websites, mobile apps, and wearable devices. Dr. Schueller advises Menssano on the assessment of digital mental health interventions.
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Kaylee Trottier
Director, Counseling Center University of North Dakota
Dr. Trottier directs the counseling center at the University of North Dakota. As a Psychologist in the United States Army Reserves, Dr Trottier gained experience in working with military and aviation populations. She has experience with fitness for duty evaluations and navigating the effects of mental health in aviation and military careers. She is advising Menssano on the needs of college students and mental health clinics.
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Kodee Walls
Director, Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS)
Dr Walls is Board Certified in Counseling Psychology and is active in a number of APA Sections. Dr. Walls's leadership includes evidenced-based clinical service delivery and training opportunities within university and college counseling centers. She collaborates with Menssano on research programs and advises it on the needs of college students and counselors.
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Nur Hani Zainal
Presidential Young Professorship National University of Singapore
Dr. Zainal is the Director of the Optimizing Wellness (OWL) Lab. Her research interest focuses on how executive functioning, social cognition, and cognitive-behavioral strategies link to the etiology, maintenance, and treatment of anxiety and depressive disorders. She collaborates with Menssano on research programs.
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