Dr.-Ing. Robert Richer

I am a postdoctoral researcher and research group leader at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, working at the interface of digital health, psychology, biomedical engineering, and artificial intelligence.

My research focuses on sensor-driven assessment of different facets of human health and behavior. I am particularly interested in digital biomarkers and contactless psychophysiological sensing in real-world settings, as well as open-source infrastructures and computational tools that help make digital health research more scalable, transparent, reproducible, and clinically meaningful.

You can find more about my publications, projects, software, and group on the dedicated subpages.

Research

My research program is centered around the following themes:

• Digital health and stress research: wearable, mobile, and ubiquitous technologies for biopsychological stress assessment in laboratory settings and in everyday life.
• Contactless psychophysiological sensing: multimodal contactless sensing for unobtrusive monitoring of physiological and behavioral signals, with a focus on video-, thermal imaging-, audio-, and radar-based methods.
• Biomedical machine learning: robust computational methods for physiological, behavioral, and health-related sensor data.
• Digital psychotherapy and translation: tools and infrastructures that connect methodological research with practical mental health applications.
• Open science and software: reproducible pipelines, shared datasets, and open-source tools such as BioPsyKit, PEPbench, and the CARWatch framework.

Current Roles and Affiliations

I’m currently affiliated with the following institutions and research groups:

FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg: Postdoctoral researcher at the Department Artificial Intelligence in Biomedical Engineering (AIBE) and research group leader of Digital Health – PsychoSense.

Central Institute of Mental Health (ZI Mannheim): Guest researcher collaborating on digital biomarkers, particularly body movements, in stress research.

Munich Center for Machine Learning (MCML): Affiliated junior member of the MCML, one of the six German AI Competence Centers.

Portabiles GmbH: A spin-off company of FAU's Machine Learning and Data Analytics Lab, where I'm serving as the CEO since 2018.

In the past, I also had the pleasure of being affiliated with:

NYU Grossman School of Medicine: Visiting Researcher in the Computational Psychiatry program with Katharina Schultebraucks, working on digital biomarkers of stress and mental health in real-world settings.

MIT Media Lab: Visiting Student and Research Assistant in the Responsive Environments group, led by Joe Paradiso, working on Mediated Atmospheres, where I focused on multimodal sensing and human-computer interaction with smart office environments.

Academic Path

Recognition

I have published in journals such as Scientific Reports, npj Mental Health Research, Psychoneuroendocrinology, and the IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics. My work has received awards including the dissertation award of the German Society for Digital Medicine (DGDM) and multiple best paper and poster awards.

Media Appearances

Selected media coverage and interviews related to our work on digital health, stress research, and contactless sensing.

Contact

The best way to reach me is by email at robert.richer@fau.de.