Student Leader, John Bunyi
Meet John Bunyi, a third-year Ph.D. student in the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work with a passion for digital mental health interventions. After getting his Masters in Marriage and Family Therapy and working as a mental health clinician in public mental health, John returned to research to explore how individuals access digital tools for mental health care. As a CAIS student leader, John helps organize events that foster interdisciplinary collaboration between students, faculty, and community members. Get to know more about John and his journey!
What are some of your highlights at USC?
I love the community at USC. The faculty and my peers are so supportive. Relatedly, I think the openness and even encouragement to collaborate across departments is so unique and important to enriching anyone’s academic experience and career as a researcher.
Tell us about why you decided to get involved in CAIS and your experience as a student leader.
My area of interest is in digital mental health interventions and how people come to access these tools. Because of this, I’m familiar with how important it is to collaborate with researchers across mental health and engineering. It was exciting to me to learn that there was a whole center dedicated to facilitating work like this. As a cherry on top, my primary faculty advisor at the time, Dr. Eric Rice, was the co-director, and his expertise in social network analysis has really helped me frame my research ideas.
Icebreaker questions:
List your favorite book, TV show, and movie.
- Book: Into the Wild
- TV show: Ted Lasso
- Movie: Motorcycle Diaries
What would the title of your autobiography be?
Stay curious, stay accepting
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
Stay curious, stay accepting
What is your favorite item you’ve bought this year?
Ray-Ban Metas! Nerdy, but this tech excites me.
If you had to delete all but 3 apps from your smartphone, which ones would you keep?
Calendar, Reminders, Notes
If you had to eat one meal everyday for the rest of your life what would it be?
Chicken wings!
What would be the most surprising scientific discovery imaginable?
Confirmation of parallel universes 🤯
If you could live anywhere in the world for a year, where would it be?
New Zealand. Or the Philippines.
Last, but not least, why should students join CAIS?
The collaboration! It can be a lot of work at times as you adjust to hearing perspectives that you might not have heard in the past, and as you share your perspective with others who think differently, but the fruits of such collaboration are well worth the effort.
