dr. AF (Ayla) Schwarz
Postdoctoral researcher and lecturerFollow me:
Dr. Ayla Schwarz is postdoc researcher at the chair group Consumption and Healthy Lifestyles. She completed her Bachelor and Master studies (2011-2016) in Applied Communication Sciences at Wageningen University. At Ghent University, Ayla completed her PhD dissertation (2019) on user engagement in serious games to promote physical activity among adolescents. Since 2019 Ayla engages in education, project coordination and research activities at Consumption and Healthy Lifestyles. Ayla has been part as a supporting coordinator of the investment theme 'Protein Transition' (2019-2022), and is involved in a number of BSc and MSc courses relating to public health and qualitative research methodology. Ayla's research focusses on the intersection of behavioral change and technology and is designing, optimizing, implementing, and evaluating digital health interventions, including apps, games, and different forms of gamification. In particular, Ayla is interested in promoting user engagement in digital health interventions and understanding implementation of digital health interventions, with a special focus on youth and healthy lifestyle behaviours.
Ayla is currently involved in the Vital@2040 project, a project by the Vitality Academy and the EWUU alliance. Ayla's research line is represented in the sub project mVital@2040. The overall aim of mVital@2040 is to investigate the role of mobile health that aims to promote informal physical activity in the neighborhood among youth (10-14 years old), living in low income neighborhoods.
Ayla is also the PI of the BEweegAPP+ project. In this project, funded by ClickNL, researching how gamification can be scaled up in policy.
Also, Ayla is involved in the Data Science and AI in the Online Food Environment project.
Ayla works together with industry partners, public organizations, citizens, and researchers.