Project Leaders 

Dr. Ian Holloway

uTECH Principal Investigator

PhD, LCSW, MPH

Dr. Holloway, professor of social welfare at UCLA, has spent his career researching how social media and new technologies can promote health and well-being.

Dr. Holloway’s work has focused primarily on gay men’s sex and sexuality. He believes that research by and for gay men has the potential to make an important impact. Technology is a huge part of how many people find friends and meet sex partners. If we can gain insights about ourselves and our sex through the technologies we already use, we can learn about resources that can help make sex safer and more fun.

 

Callisto Boka

Research Coordinator

 

Callisto Boka is a graduate student in Epidemiology at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and the research coordinator for uTECH at UCLA’s Hub for Health Intervention, Policy, and Practice. 

 

They have worked on uTECH since 2021, coordinating research activities as an undergraduate, full-time staff member, and now graduate student. They are deeply interested in research related to technology-driven health interventions for infectious diseases such as HIV and STDs, particularly those tailored to the LGBTQ+ community.

Motivational Counselors

Colin Fyfe

Colin Fyfe is a research associate at UCLA’s Hub for Health Intervention. He earned his B.A. in Psychology from UC Berkeley and M.S. Clinical Psychology from San Francisco State University. 

He brings with him vast amounts of counseling experience, working  primarily with marginalized and vulnerable communities    around substance use and mental health in the Bay area. Additionally, he has prior research exposure working in labs focusing on emotional health, substance use, and sexual health.

Kimberly Fuentes

Kimberly Fuentes is a doctoral student in Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She earned her MSW at UCLA and her B.A in Geography and Environmental Studies at UC Santa Barbara.

Prior to entering the doctoral program, Kimberly worked on implementing policy-level changes to reduce barriers for youth and young adults in the foster care system as a Pritzker fellow at the Office of Child Protection. She currently serves on the board of the Sex Workers Outreach Project of Los Angeles (SWOP-LA), as the director of services and outreach.

Juan Jauregui

Juan C. Jauregui is a doctoral student in Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. He earned his B.S. in Psychobiology from UCLA and his MSW and MPH from the University of Michigan.

Juan previously worked with the Resilience + Resistance Collective at uMich School of Public Health. He also served as a Research Associate for the UCLA Adolescent Trials Network and as a Crisis Worker for a national suicide hotline. He currently works as a research consultant on an international study of LGBTQ youth mental health in addition to his work on uTECH.

 

Cal Brisbin

 

Cal Brisbin is an MSW candidate at UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. He earned his B.A. in Religious Studies and Psychology from Oberlin College. His research interests include social/internalized stigma, substance use disparities, and social determinants of health.

 

He has always been interested in decision-making, especially around substance use and sexual health behavior and is curious to know more about how people find balance and joy –especially people with marginalized identities. He is also curious about the ways modern technology has helped and hindered health at individual and community levels.