The team at CDHI, together with co-supervisors Prof. Dr. Elgar Fleisch and Prof. Dr. Tobias Kowatsch, warmly congratulates Robert Jakob on the successful defense of his PhD thesis at ETH Zurich on March 6, 2025.

Robert’s thesis, titled “Predicting and Preventing Nonadherence to Mobile Health Interventions,” resulted from four years of research, six individual research projects, multiple publications in leading digital health journals and computer science conferences, and research fellowships at Harvard University and the National University of Singapore.

Throughout his PhD, Robert collaborated with a range of public institutions and private sector partners, including the Federal Office of Public Health of the Swiss Confederation (BAG), the Federal Food Safety and Veterinary Office (BLV), the Swiss Research Institute for Public Health and Addiction (ISGF), the Center for Technology and Behavioral Health at Dartmouth College, Pathmate Technologies AG, WayBetter Inc., and Vivira Health Lab GmbH. In his projects, he contributed to the evaluation of various Digital Health Interventions, such as MySwissFoodPyramid, WayBetter, Vivira, Manoa, SweetGoals, and LvlUP.

Robert co-authored the following scientific articles during his PhD:

1. Jakob R, Harperink S, Rudolf A, Fleisch E, Haug S, Mair J, Salamanca-Sanabria A, Kowatsch T. Factors Influencing Adherence to mHealth Apps for Prevention or Management of Noncommunicable Diseases: Systematic Review. J Med Internet Res 2022;24(5):e35371. DOI:10.2196/35371
2. Jakob R, Narauskas J, Fleisch E, König LM, Kowatsch T. Factors associated with adherence to a public mobile nutritional health intervention: retrospective cohort study. Computers in Human Behavior Reports 15: 100445. 2024. DOI: 10.1016/j.chbr.2024.100445
3. Jakob R, Mueller F, Lepper N, Mekniran W, Barata F, Kowatsch T. User churn prediction with mobile app data: Systematic Review. In: (2025) (In preparation)
4. Jakob R, Lepper N, Fleisch E, Kowatsch T. Predicting early user churn in a public digital weight loss intervention. In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’24), May 11–16, 2024, Honolulu, HI, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA. DOI: 10.1145/3613904.3642321
5. Jakob R, Benning L, Sévin CM, Von Wangenheim F, Fleisch E, Kowatsch T. Predicting Nonadherence to Mobile Health Interventions. In: (2025) (In preparation)
6. Jakob R, Plaitano E, Santhanam P, Mishra V, Kowatsch T, Stanger C. The Impact of Monetary Incentives and Web-Based Health Coaching on Adherence to a Mobile Health Intervention for Young Adults With Type 1 Diabetes. In: (2025) (In preparation)
7. Haug S, Augsburger M, Jakob R, Kowatsch T. Literaturstudie zu Verhaltensänderungen durch mHealth Applikationen. Federal Office of Public Health of the Swiss Confederation (BAG). DOI: 10.3929/ethz-b-000549326.
8. Paz Castro R, Haug S, Debelak R, Jakob R, Kowatsch T, Schaub M. Engagement With a Mobile Phone–Based Life Skills Intervention for Adolescents and Its Association With Participant Characteristics and Outcomes: Tree-Based Analysis. J Med Internet Res 2022;24(1):e28638. DOI:10.2196/28638
9. Mair JL, Salamanca-Sanabria A, Frese B, Abend S, Jakob R, Kowatsch T, Haug S. Effective Behavior Change Techniques in Digital Health Interventions for the Prevention or Management of Noncommunicable Diseases: An Umbrella Review. 2023. Annals of Behavioral Medicine 57, 10: 817–835. DOI: 10.1093/abm/kaad041
10. Mekniran W, Jakob R, Mair JL, Gand K, Schlieter H, Castro O, Nißen M, Huynh P, Giger OF, Bischof AY, Pfitzer E, Frese B, Londral A, Fleisch E, Kowatsch T, Jovanova M. Prevention over cure: a prevention-first framework for noncommunicable diseases. In: (2025) (In preparation)

All the best, dear Robert with your next steps!