Mahima Saxena receives Center for Interdisciplinary Scientific Computation seed grant

Mahima Saxena, assistant professor of psychology, and her research collaborators, Sonja Petrovic and Lulu Kang, associate professors of applied mathematics in the Illinois Tech College of Science, received a $40,000 Center for Interdisciplinary Scientific Computation seed grant for their project, “Computational Challenges in Occupational Health Psychology: Using Statistics to Model Dynamic Worker Well-Being.”

Saxena is an industrial-organizational psychologist who specializes in occupational health psychology. Much of her research involves collecting data on psychological aspects of work performance and health to understand the well-being from employees in real-time.

The research team plans to work on developing new computational tools with Saxena’s existing research data, potentially collecting additional data later this year to fine tune their methods.

 “I am really excited about this project because it is a great example of how two completely disciplines can come together to solve a significant research problem,” says Saxena. “This project brings together an organizational psychologist, an applied mathematician, and a statistician to answer substantive psychological questions with new, sophisticated computational tools. Our skills are very complementary.”