Associate Professor Sam Pimentel was recently awarded a sizable grant by the Huo Family Foundation in conjunction with family online safety company Aura to study the impact of social media on children’s mental health. Ran Barzilay, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and Scott Kollins, Chief Medical Officer at Aura, are co-investigators on the project, which is titled “Dissecting the impact of social media use on adolescent mental health using causal inference.”

“I’m honored by the opportunity to partner with Aura, CHOP, and the Huo Family Foundation to work on this important topic,” says Pimentel. “Social media use is ubiquitous but there is so much we don’t understand about its health implications. We aim to deliver actionable conclusions for youth and their families through our team’s combined expertise in data curation, statistical methods, and mental health.”  

Pimentel’s research focuses on developing statistical methods for causal inference in large-scale observational studies, particularly using discrete optimization to generate well-matched comparison groups. By designing more transparent and interpretable methods for analyzing complex datasets, his work helps researchers better understand the effects of specific interventions while accounting for potential unobserved confounding variables. These methods are frequently applied to fields such as health services research, public policy, and the social sciences, including studies on surgical outcomes, and opioid use disorder. He is also a core faculty member of the Computational Precision Health program jointly with UC Berkeley and UCSF.

The Huo Family Foundation is a London-based nonprofit organization established in 2009 by Dr. Yan Huo, the managing partner of Capula Investment Management, and his wife, Iris Huo. The foundation operates with a global mission to support education, the arts, and scientific research, with a primary focus within the United Kingdom, the United States, and China. Since its inception, the foundation has invested more than $75 million in various international initiatives. In recent years, the foundation has become a significant funder of various neuroscience endeavors.

Founded in 2017 by Hari Ravichandran, Aura is one of the fastest-growing online safety solutions for individuals and families. From real-time threat detection and scam alerts to tools that help parents protect their kids from predators, cyberbullying and tech-driven mental health risks, Aura empowers families to thrive in the digital world. Data for the project led by Associate Professor Sam Pimentel will be drawn from Aura’s Techwise (“Technology Exposure and Child Health: Wellness Impact and Social Effects”) clinical study, a research initiative launched in December 2024 which aims to understand the relationship between technology usage and mental wellbeing outcomes in our children. 

-Alex Coughlin