Meet our team
We are team Xtrinsic, a cooperation between GDSC-Freiburg in Germany and GDSC-Kyiv in Ukraine.
Our mission is to improve mental health research and therapy using state-of-the-art technology.
Our team:
- Alexander Monneret, Team Lead, AI/ML specialist
- Kateryna Vandysh, UI/UX designer
- Emma Rein, BSc. Psychology
- Fabian Okeke, Flutter developer
This is how we all met
Alex:
The team started with me (Alex) the GDSC leader of Freiburg university in Germany. As a Machine Learning specialist, I was always fascinated by the power of AI and how useful it can be in improving our lives.
The Google Solution Challenge 2022 solving the United Nations Sustainability Goals was the perfect opportunity to demonstrate that belief.
Fabian:
One of my main tasks as a community leader is to organize and host various events on our campus. One of them was the kickoff event for the Google Solution Challenge 2022. That is where Fabian and I met and discussed the possibility of forming a team to participate in the challenge. Fabian has been the perfect match for the team due to his experience in Flutter development.
Emma:
Consulting with the domain experts is one of the main steps in building a project, that’s why we reached out to the psychology institute at our university for help. Emma showed immediate interest in our project because her bachelor thesis and her practical experience as a trainee tackled issues close to our project.
Kateryna:
A very important part of our team was missing, a UI/UX designer. Since our faculty doesn’t offer this subject in our computer science curriculum we weren’t able to find anyone on our campus to join our team. Luckily during a networking event for GDSC leads in Europe I reached out to my fellow leads for help and asked if any of their GDSC members would join our team, and that’s how we met Kateryna.
What inspired our idea?
“Our inspiration comes from our own experience with mental health issues. Two of our team members were directly impacted by the recently waged wars in Syria and Ukraine. And all of us have experienced mental health conditions during the pandemic. We learned through our hardships how to overcome these tough situations and stay strong and positive. We believe that with our know-how and Google technologies we can make a difference and help shed a light on mental health issues.”
How does the app work exactly?
Our app works as an intervention tool for mental health issues (nightmares, panic attacks, anxiety, …etc.) by adapting the environment of the user to his needs.
Example (panic attack detection): having a panic attack has a physiological impact on our body, the BPM and HRV go very high and the breathing becomes very short.
These signs can be monitored and detected using a smartwatch and a machine learning model.
Once these signs appear a trigger is sent to the Google Assistant to initiate the appropriate action for that event ex.(playing relaxing sounds in the background, changing the room light to blue, or starting a guided breathing exercise) which would help interrupt the panic attack and speed up the relaxation process.
The technology behind all that magic
Many very complex technologies are running in the background to make the magic happen.
- Collecting the health data we used the google health services API provided by the android WearOS
- TensorFlow lite was used for running the machine learning model on the mobile device
- Google Assistant and Google Home APIs were used to control the smart devices (RGB light, Music box, … etc.)
- Stila services for stress monitoring and detection
We are very thankful to Google for organizing such an amazing competition and for our community for providing endless support to our project and mission.
