Rachael Kee

Inoxity Presented at SANS 2026

2026-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

Rachael Kee presented Inoxity: A Modular iOS Platform for High-Throughput Data Collection at the Annual Meeting of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society (SANS 2026) in San Diego, CA. The presentation introduced the first fully developed version of Inoxity, an open-source iOS research platform designed to collect sleep, media use, and EMA data in naturalistic settings. More details are featured on the CCSL website.

Selected as Top 10 Finalist at the UC Davis Grad Slam 2026

2026-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

Rachael Kee was selected as one of the Top 10 Finalists at the UC Davis Grad Slam 2026, UC Davis’s annual three-minute thesis competition. She presented a talk on her research examining how media use shapes sleep quality and downstream cognitive outcomes. The competition challenges graduate students to communicate their research to a broad public audience in three minutes.

Invited Talk at the UC Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center

2026-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

Rachael Kee delivered an invited talk titled Media Use, Sleep, and Well-being as Digital Risk Biomarkers of Dementia for the UC Davis Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC). The talk presented her research on how patterns of media use and sleep can serve as digital behavioral markers for tracking cognitive health and dementia risk, with implications for early detection and intervention.

Advanced to Doctoral Candidacy

2026-02-03T00:00:00+00:00

Rachael Kee successfully advanced to doctoral candidacy in February 2026. Her qualifying exam paper, Beyond the Laboratory: Introducing High-Throughput Communication Science, proposes an integrative research agenda that combines high-throughput, temporally sensitive, and ecologically valid multimodal data streams with Marr’s (1982) tri-level framework to reveal the multilevel and reciprocal causal dynamics inherent to communication theories. The paper offers a roadmap for empirically implementing high-throughput data collection and highlights its broad utility across multiple communication subfields, charting a path forward for better capturing the complex, multilevel, and reciprocal causal mechanisms of human communication.

Her committee was chaired by Dr. Drew Cingel, with Dr. Richard Huskey (Advisor), Dr. Soojong Kim, and Dr. Emorie Beck serving as committee members.

Invited Lecture on Sleep, Dreaming, and Media Use at Cal Poly Humboldt

2026-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

Rachael Kee delivered an invited lecture titled Why We Sleep, Why We Dream, and Why Your Phone Might Influence Both for PSYC 104: Introduction to Psychology at California Polytechnic State University, Humboldt. The lecture introduced students to the science of sleep and dreaming alongside her own research on how media use, particularly smartphone and screen behavior, shapes sleep quality and outcomes.

Inoxity Receives Best AI Innovation Award at the Computational Social Science Escape 2026

2026-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

Rachael Kee presented A Year in the Making: Introducing Inoxity at the Computational Social Science Escape 2026 in Davis, CA. The presentation showcased the development of an early sleep and media research app concept into Inoxity, a fully developed open-source iOS platform for high-throughput data collection. The project received the event’s Best AI Innovation Award, marking the second consecutive year Rachael Kee received the innovation award at the Computational Social Science Escape. Rachael also served on the organizing team for the 2026 event. A full recap of the event is available on the CSS website.

Invited Panelist at Cal Poly Humboldt Communication Alumni Panel

2026-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

Rachael Kee was an invited panelist for a Communication Department Alumni Panel at California Polytechnic State University, Humboldt. She joined fellow alumni in discussing post-graduate pathways, doctoral training, and career development with current communication students, sharing her experiences navigating the transition into a PhD program and pursuing research in communication and sleep science.

Negativity Bias Research Presented at NCA 2025

2025-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

Co-authored research by Rachael Kee and collaborators was presented at the 111th Annual Convention of the National Communication Association (NCA 2025) in Denver, CO. The project, The Negativity Bias For News: A Value-Based Decision Making Study, examined media selection and value-based decision making using economic news headlines. The UC Davis Department of Communication also featured this and other departmental work in a convention recap available on the department website.

iOS Research App Project Pitched at ICA 2025 Hackathon

2025-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

Rachael Kee participated in the ICA Pre-Conference Hackathon at ICA 2025 in Denver, CO, pitching an idea for an iOS data collection application that later became Inoxity, her open-source iOS platform for high-throughput data collection. This marked the second year in a row she organized a hackathon team around sleep and media-related research questions. Rachael also served as a part of the organizing team for this year’s Hackathon.

Negativity Bias Research Presented at ICA 2025

2025-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

Rachael Kee co-authored two presentations at the 75th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association (ICA 2025) in Denver, CO, both examining the negativity bias in news consumption. Pre-conference coverage is on the CCSL website, and the UC Davis Department of Communication highlighted the delegation’s work in a department news story.