Gaylen Fronk, PhD

Clinical and Data Scientist Dr. Gaylen Fronk has joined UW-CTRI to continue her research on how to best leverage machine learning and mobile devices to deliver personalized, targeted treatments in “real time” and empower people to recover from addictions.

She’s working with UW-CTRI Researcher and Assistant Professor Dr. Jesse Kaye on his K23 grant from the National Institute of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Drug Abuse. They intend to explore how machine learning (a subfield of artificial intelligence, or “AI”) might help to personalize treatment in real time for people trying to address their tobacco use.

It’s an ideal fit, as Fronk’s dissertation was also on how to use machine learning to help people quit smoking.

For Kaye’s project, Fronk will collaborate to analyze data from 3,000 patients who already attempted to quit. From that, Kaye and Fronk will develop models to match future individuals with personalized treatments.

In the future, they’d also like to combine that algorithm with mobile devices to offer interventions when either the participant’s geolocation (near a tobacco store, or a friend’s house where they typically smoke), behavior or responses might generate an alert.

It’s personalized medicine in the modern age.

When it all comes together, will study participants interact with an app – if, say, they are going through an emotional time and are craving cigarettes at a gas station?

Fronk said she’s not sure, “But even if they don’t, that would tell us information, too.”

Kaye’s grant goes another four years, and Fronk will work on it for at least the next two. During that time, she’ll also write a grant proposal for her own K award.

She earned her:

• Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2025.
• M.S. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2019.
• B.S. in Psychology from Davidson College in 2016.