Clemens Stachl

Clemens Stachl is an Associate Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of St. Gallen (HSG), affiliated with the Institute for Business Information Technology (IBT). His research focuses on leveraging digital trace data from smartphones and mobile devices to understand human behavior, personality, and well-being. He specializes in applying machine learning techniques to analyze behavioral patterns in naturalistic settings, with particular emphasis on predicting life outcomes, mental health dynamics, and cognitive abilities through digital footprints.

Key research domains include smartphone-based ambulatory assessment, personality sensing, and computational methods for social and behavioral science. His work addresses ethical implications of AI in data-driven research and emphasizes methodological advancements in machine learning applications. He has contributed to frameworks for human-centered hypothesis generation, transformer-based text analysis tutorials, and best practices in supervised machine learning for psychologists.

Stachl leads projects like the Smartphone Sensing Panel Study on Cognitive Abilities and collaborates with interdisciplinary teams to develop tools for e-mental health interventions. His research spans topics from authoritarianism prediction via behavioral data to analyzing well-being during crises like the Ukraine war. He actively publishes in high-impact journals and contributes to methodological debates on algorithmic ethics and generalizability in psychological research.