Eric Heckler

Arizona State University Arizona Dr. Eric Hekler, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the School of Nutrition and Health Promotion at Arizona State University and is the director of the Designing Health Lab @ASU. His research focuses on how to use new and emerging technologies (e.g., smartphones, cloud computing, big data) to promote health behavior change, particularly physical activity and healthful eating. His expertise is in the development and testing of health behavior change interventions via a mixture of behavioral science, user experience design, and human computer interactions methods. Dr. Hekler has developed novel curriculum at ASU focused on designing health behavior change interventions using a mixture of behavioral science and user experience design for promoting healthful habits. Prior to ASU, Dr. Hekler worked for three years at Stanford University as a postdoctoral research fellow under the mentorship of Drs. Abby King, Tom Robinson, and Bill Haskell. He received a B.A. in psychology with three minors in biology, education, and music at SUNY Albany and then later received an M.S. and Ph.D. in Clinical Health Psychology from Rutgers University under the mentorship of Drs. Richard Contrada and Howard Leventhal. Dr. Hekler has received several honors including membership in Phi Beta Kappa, Meritorious Citation Award for a mHealth research, and a team member of a winning team of the Bay Area Health 2.0 “Code-a-thon” in Winter 2011.