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Be part of shaping a better digital future for young people’s mental health.
Join Digital Youth and MindTech for an inspiring event packed with insight, innovation, and collaboration.
Take part in:
Don’t miss this opportunity to connect, learn, and lead change.
The event will consist of a variety of talks in the morning and seminars and networking opportunities in the afternoon.
Download the programme here
10:00 Welcome address - Professor Chris Hollis and Professor Ellen Townsend
10:10 Moving beyond screen time in DIORA: The importance of specific digital activities and the reactions they induce as predictors of adolescent mental health - Professor Edmund Sonuga-Barke, Dr Kasia Kostyrka-Allchorne and Eliz Azeri, Sprouting Minds
10:30 The effectiveness of a socially assistive robot for improving emotion regulation among LGBTQ+ youth experiencing self-harm thoughts - Dr Petr Slovak, Dr A Jess Williams and Lucy Martin, Sprouting Minds
10:50 When SPARX fly: Lessons learned from a gamified digital CBT intervention for low mood in young people - Professor Chris Hollis, Dr Mathijs Lucassen, Dr Camilla Babbage and Stuart Dodzo, Sprouting Minds
11:10 Refreshments, exhibition, demonstrations
11:45 Keynote 1: Fixing the science of technology harms - Professor Amy Orben, University of Cambridge
12:05 Spotlight on policy: Panel discussion in response to keynote, chaired by Professor Peter Fonagy CBE - Baroness Hilary Cass and Professor Bernadka Dubicka
12:25 Lunch, exhibition, demonstrations and networking
13:25 Interactive Workshops
14:55 Refreshments and exhibition
15:20 Panel session: ‘Bridging the valley of death’- moving research to implementation and commercialisation, chaired by Professor Chris Hollis - Professor Ed Watkins, Robert Higginson, Barnaby Perks and Dr Aaron Kandola
16:00 Keynote 2: Taking digital interventions for youth from research to practice - Professor Cathy Creswell, University of Oxford
16:20 Next steps and closing comments
16:30 Event close
Chris Hollis is the Director of MindTech, Professor of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry and Digital Mental Health at the University of Nottingham, and Consultant in Developmental Neuropsychiatry with Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust.
His main areas of interest include ADHD, Tourette syndrome, neurodevelopmental disorders and the development, evaluation and implementation of digital technologies in mental healthcare. Chris was a member of the NICE ADHD Guideline committee and NICE Diagnostic Guidance committee (DG60) ‘Digital technologies for assessing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)’. He is co-chief investigator on the UKRI funded Digital Youth programme, exploring digital risk, resilience and interventions for youth mental health.
He is currently leading the NIHR-funded ORBIT study, which is evaluating and implementing a remote digital intervention for children and young people with tics and Tourette syndrome.
Professor Ellen Townsend is an award-winning academic in the School of Psychology at the University of Nottingham where she leads the Self-Harm Research Group. She is also a Visiting Professor at the Nottingham Institute of Mental Health. Ellen co-leads the UKRI-funded ‘Digital Youth’ programme, a major interdisciplinary research initiative aimed at understanding risk and resilience in the digital world and developing novel digital tools to support adolescent mental health including a new collaborative assessment tool for self-harm (The CaTS-APP). She is also a Co-Investigator at the NIHR HealthTech Research Centre for Mental Health (MindTech) where she co-leads the Children and Young People’s theme.
Her team is internationally recognised for world-leading participatory research, pioneering innovative tools and methods that involve young people across the research lifecycle. Ellen is also Co-Director of Connect Nottingham, a new community research and engagement hub at the heart of the Castle Meadow Campus, funded through a major capital grant from the Garfield Weston Foundation.
Professor of Developmental Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience, Kings College London.Honorary Skou Professor, Aarhus University, Denmark. Visiting Research Professor, University of Hong Kong
Edmund is a developmental psychologist who studies the causes, course and developmental consequences of mental health and neuro-developmental conditions. Motivated by his own childhood experience of learning and behaviour difficulties, he has devoted his research career to improving the life chances of young people, especially those with neurodevelopmental conditions, such as ADHD. To this end he has developed new ways of thinking about and studying neurodevelopment using experimental developmental neuroscience methods and theories.
Edmund is an elected Fellow of The Academy of Medical Sciences (2016), The British Academy (2018),The Danish Academy of Honorary Skou Professors (2019) and a Member of the Academia Europea (2023). He is Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. Edmund is a Roman Catholic husband and father, cigar evangelist, soul music aficionado & lifelong Derby County fan (:(). He is the proud current holder of the Digital Youth Mover & Shaker Award for his dancing.
Dr Kasia Kostyrka-Allchorne is a developmental psychologist and lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Queen Mary University of London. Her research examines the risks and opportunities of growing up in a digital world, and spans child and adolescent development, mental health, and parenting interventions. Kasia contributes to large, cross-institutional research programmes under two main strands: developing and evaluating digital interventions to improve psychological support for parents and investigating how online experiences impact adolescents’ mental health and wellbeing. Within the Digital Youth programme, she has been involved in the DIORA study, which explores why certain digital activities act as risk factors for youth mental health and the mechanisms underlying these effects. Her work is guided by participatory and co-creative principles, ensuring that research remains relevant to real-world challenges and informs effective, evidence-based support for children, young people and their families.
Eliz is a member of Digital Youth’s Young Person’s Advisory Group, Sprouting Minds and currently works as a Peer Support Worker for Mind mental health charity. Her experiences with mental health difficulties in her youth led her to pursue a Psychology degree at King’s College London. This further spurred a desire to improve young people’s understanding of mental health and increase their involvement in mental health research. As part of her final year undergraduate project, Eliz explored the relationship between ADHD and risky online behaviours. She believes initiatives like Sprouting Minds are key in the development of a person-centred approach to mental health for young people, which puts co-production, inclusivity and accessibility at the heart of youth mental health research.
Stuart (Sprouting Minds member) is a passionate advocate for digital inclusion, youth empowerment, and mental health innovation. With experience spanning community engagement, policy and digital wellbeing, Stuart focuses on bridging gaps in access and resilience for young people online. At the Digital Youth x MindTech Conference, he’ll bring insights on co-creating youth-centred strategies for risk, resilience, and intervention in digital mental health spaces.
Petr Slovak is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow and Reader in Human-Computer Interaction at King's College London's Informatics department, with visiting appointments at KCL's Child and Adolescent Psychology department and the University of Oxford's Human-centred AI & Experimental Psychology groups. His interdisciplinary research focuses on designing and evaluating technology-enabled mental health interventions, particularly for children, adolescents, and families.
His work bridges user-centered design methodologies with clinical and prevention-science frameworks to create digital interventions that operate within users' everyday lives. Dr. Slovak holds a 7-year UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship exploring how digital technologies can integrate mental health support into daily life. His research appears regularly in top-tier HCI venues, including CHI, TOCHI, and CSCW, earning 11 Best Paper/Honorable Mention awards since 2017.
Dr A Jess Williams is a Lecturer of Suicide Prevention Epidemiology at Swansea University, National Centre for Suicide Prevention and Self-Harm Research. She completed her postdoctoral position at King’s College London working with Dr Slovak, on the Digital Youth project. Jess’s work focuses on the experiences of LGBTQ+ young people who self-harm, with a particular interest in intervention design and deployment.
Dr Mathijs (Mat) Lucassen (he/him) is a Reader in Mental Health within the School of Health and Medical Sciences at City St George’s, University of London. He began his career working as an occupational therapist in out-patient Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), initially within New Zealand’s first Youth Early Intervention in Psychosis (EIP) Service and then more recently he co-ordinated a CAMHS day programme for adolescents with severe mental health problems. Mat was part of the core team that created SPARX, he also developed and evaluated a version of that intervention amongst LGBTQ+ adolescents as part of his PhD project. Over the past decade he has been involved in several SPARX-related studies conducted in Australasia, North America and Europe.
Camilla Babbage is a Research Fellow at MindTech, specialising in digital mental health interventions for young people, with a strong focus on coproduction and public involvement. Her work spans multiple projects including the UKRI funded Digital Youth, where she is Trial Manager for SPARX-UK a serious game delivering cognitive behavioural therapy (SPARX) for young people with low mood, and co-developing a digital self-harm tool (CaTS-App). She also contributes to studies exploring engagement, implementation, and healthcare access for people with neurodevelopmental conditions.
Programme Amy OrbenProgramme LeaderMRC Cognition and Brain Sciences UnitUniversity of Cambridge
Professor Amy Orben is a Research Professor at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit and Fellow of St. John’s College at the University of Cambridge. She leads an internationally recognised research programme investigating the links between mental health and digital technology use in adolescence. She routinely advises policymakers and public servants around the world, for example as Director of a 2025 UK Government independent research commission on this topic and as a member of the Science Advisory Council at the UK Department for Education. Professor Orben completed her DPhil in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford and MA in Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge. She has received a range of prestigious awards including the Association for Psychological Science Rising Star Award (2024), Medical Research Council Early Career Impact Prize (2022) and the British Psychological Society Award for Outstanding Contributions to Doctoral Research (2019). She also received the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science Mission Award (2020) for her work to improve scientific practice and research culture in her field.
Peter Fonagy, CBE, Professor of Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Developmental Science, Head of Division for Psychology and Language Sciences, UCL. He is also Executive Clinical Director for UCLPartners Mental Health and Wellbeing Programme, and Senior National Clinical Adviser for NHS England on Children and Young Peoples’ Mental Health. Peter was Chief Executive of Anna Freud for over 20 years.
His clinical and research interests lie in early attachment relationships, social cognition, borderline personality disorder and violence. A central focus has been an innovative research-based psychodynamic therapeutic approach, mentalization-based treatment, which was developed in collaboration with a number of clinical sites in the UK and USA. Publishing over 750 scientific papers and 23 books.
A former President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health from 2012-2015, Dr Cass was appointed by NHS England to chair the Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for children and young people, which was published in April 2024.
Her previous clinical role was as a tertiary neurodisability consultant. She also held a range of senior education and management roles throughout her career, and was closely involved in the development of paediatric palliative care services at Evelina London Children’s Hospital. After retiring from clinical practice, she established a group leading work on how to address the challenges for both families and professionals in supporting the rising numbers of children with complex medical conditions and disability.
She was awarded the OBE for services to child health in 2015. In 2024 she was nominated for a life peerage and was created Baroness Cass on 22 August 2024.
Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Hull and York Medical School University of York; Honorary MAHSC Professor, University of Manchester; Consultant Psychiatrist, Greater Manchester Mental Health Trust; Editor in Chief, Journal of Child and Adolescent Mental Health
I have always been a clinical academic, working as a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist in both inpatient and community services, and currently professor at the University of York. Previously, I was chair of the Royal College of Psychiatrists Child and Adolescent faculty, which involved wide-ranging national policy advisory work, as well as leading on the college position statement on online safety, which we are now updating. My research interests include mood disorders, the digital and natural environments and their impact on the mental health of young people. I am currently the chief investigator of the NIHR multi-site BAY trial of web-based Behavioural Activation in young people with depression; a co-investigator of a trial of Forest School (FINCH); and a co-investigator of the £7.6 million UKRI funded York Smart Data Donation Service, which is focused on addressing the significant gap in understanding the digital lives of young people through data donation.
Professor of Clinical Psychology
Edward Watkins is Professor of Experimental and Applied Clinical Psychology at the School of Psychology, University of Exeter. He is a chartered clinical psychologist specialising in cognitive-behavioural therapy and director of the Mood Disorders Centre at the University of Exeter. His work focuses on the psychological understanding, treatment and prevention of worry, rumination, anxiety, and depression using face-to-face and digital approaches, across the lifespan from adolescence into young adults and beyond. His research has been funded by the Wellcome Trust, UK Medical Research Council, European Commission and US NIMH. He has completed a large-scale Horizon2020 grant on apps for mental health in young people (ECoWeB) and currently leads Nurture-U a large UKRI-funded project to develop and evaluate a stepped change whole university approach to improve student mental health, and Calming Minds, a Wellcome Trust Mental Health award focusing on understanding how digital cognitive-behavioural therapy changes repetitive negative thought.
Robert, a co-founder of Par Equity and member of the Investment Committee, oversees new investment opportunities and manages the firm’s technology infrastructure. With a career spanning hardware, software, and communications product development, he has held senior strategy roles in Europe and the U.S. before becoming an investor. His experience includes positions at Artemis-Aurea Software, Reuters, Telekurs AG, and ABN AMRO’s investment bank. Since 2002, he has focused on technology transfer and early-stage businesses, particularly in Health Technology.
Barnaby is an engineer and entrepreneur. After biomedical engineering research at the University of Dundee, Barnaby went on to design award-winning assistive technology products for people with complex disabilities. In 2010, he moved into mental health technology firstly as Founding CEO of Cambridge-based ieso before leading Oxford University spin out Oxford VR. In April 2024, Barnaby became CEO of St John’s Innovation Centre. He also works in consulting and non-executive roles, providing support and mentorship to digital health businesses.
Aaron works across academia and industry to support the research, development, and scaling of evidence-based health technologies. He co-leads the MindTech Bridge programme, an Office for Life Sciences–funded initiative that is building the infrastructure needed to accelerate the national and international adoption of evidence-based mental health technologies. He is also Chief Scientific Officer at juli, a digital health platform helping people with long-term mental and physical health conditions to better self-manage their conditions and wellbeing. At UCL, Aaron’s research focuses on psychiatric epidemiology and digital mental health. He brings a multidisciplinary background, having advised numerous health technology start-ups and held roles at the Department of Health and Social Care, Wellcome Trust, Zinc VC, and the Mental Health Foundation, among others.
Cathy Creswell is Professor of Developmental Clinical Psychology at the University of Oxford, an Honorary Consultant Clinical Psychologist in Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, an NIHR Senior Investigator and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and the Director of the new Oxford Centre for Emerging Minds Research which conducts research that aims to contributes to a world where differences between people are understood and accepted, strengths are capitalised on, and mental health difficulties are prevented or addressed early. Her research particularly focuses on the development, maintenance, and treatment of common mental health problems in children. In recent years this has included the co-development, evaluation, and implementation of digitally-augmented, therapist-supported, brief parent-led interventions for anxiety and related problems in children.
ADMiRE ADHD Navigator is a medical-grade digital platform transforming ADHD assessment and treatment for young people in Ireland. It tackles systemic challenges like long delays and fragmented communication by uniting families, schools, and clinicians on a user-friendly interface.
EFSim is a 25 minute gamified screening tool that helps identify a child's executive functioning challenges in the form of an engaging web game. Upon completion of the game, a report is automatically generated with support strategies and techniques for the carers and teachers.
Transforming mental health with better access, better outcomes, and better cost with a range of evidence-backed digital therapeutics for adults and children/adolescents.
Ticket cancellation policy
Cancellation policy - face to face event
Digital Youth and MindTech shall not be held liable to refund any fees should the event be cancelled or rescheduled due to force majeure or any other cause whatsoever beyond their control.
Digital Youth and MindTech withholds the right to reschedule events and substitute presenters where necessary. If we feel it is in our best interests to reschedule an event attendees will be given the opportunity to either attend the rescheduled event or to receive a full refund of the total amount of the delegate fee.
Digital Youth and MindTech shall not be held liable to refund any accommodation or associated travel costs should an event be cancelled or rescheduled.
This event is a unique opportunity to be part of the conversation and contribute to the future of mental health for young people. Mark your calendars and join us for a day of learning, networking, and inspiration.
If you have any questions about the event please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.