Monisola Jayeoba Wins AAUW International Fellowship

Monisola Jayeoba, a third-year PhD student in Northwestern’s Technology and Social Behavior program, was awarded an American Association of University Women (AAUW) International Fellowship.

AAUW international fellows demonstrate academic excellence, significant research contributions, and a commitment to the advancement of women and girls in their home countries through community or civic service.

Jayeoba aims to advance medical discovery and healthcare delivery by co-designing cutting-edge technological solutions at the intersection of human-computer interaction and health informatics.

In collaboration with Northwestern University’s Scalable Telehealth Cancer Care (STELLAR) Center, Jayeoba and adviser Maia Jacobs are developing accessible and scalable tools to assist cancer care teams in improving patient-provider communication around modifiable health risk behavior to promote patients’ long-term health and quality of life.

Director of the NU-PATH Lab, Jacobs is an assistant professor of computer science at Northwestern Engineering and assistant professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine.

STELLAR, a Cancer Moonshot Telehealth Research Center of Excellence funded by the National Cancer Institute, is led by Bonnie Spring, professor of preventive medicine and psychiatry and behavioral sciences and director of the Center for Behavior and Health at Feinberg. Jayeoba also works with STELLAR investigators Siobhan Phillips, professor of preventive medicine; Brian Hitsman, associate professor of preventive medicine, medical social sciences, psychiatry and behavioral sciences, and surgery; and Sofia Garcia, director of the Cancer Survivorship Institute and professor of medical social sciences and psychiatry and behavioral sciences.

Using participatory design methods, Jayeoba is designing patient progress reports that provide oncology teams with a status snapshot, which shows whether a patient is achieving or not meeting goals such as level of physical activity, reducing/quitting smoking, and attending group coaching sessions. The reports, which are delivered via a Northwestern Medicine electronic health record in-basket message one or two days before a clinic visit, also include prompts for the physician to facilitate encouragement toward health behavior change through “light-touch” behavioral interventions.

“The AAUW International Fellowship is a reassurance that my research has potential contributions toward positively improving human lives and that I am not alone on the journey,” Jayeoba said. “I appreciate the enormous support of my adviser, Dr. Maia Jacobs, my colleagues in the PATH Lab, and my family and friends, without whose help I couldn’t have attained this lofty height.”

During the 2024-25 fellowship term, Jayeoba is excited to advance her research, share her findings through published papers and conference presentations, and expand her professional network with the AAUW alumni community. She will also continue to support women and girls’ education in her role as the president of Northwestern’s Graduate Society of Women Engineers (GradSWE).

In 2023, Jayeoba received a Design Research Cluster Fellowship through Northwestern’s Center for Human-Computer Interaction + Design, a competitive program for doctoral students focused on building trans-disciplinary collaborations to tackle complex, high-impact problems across domains and disciplines.

Jayeoba earned a master’s degree in design informatics from the University of Edinburgh in 2022, where she received a Mastercard Foundation Scholarship. In 2019, Jayeoba completed a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from the Federal University Oye-Ekiti, Nigeria.