“The Role of Science and Scientists in Shaping Societal Turning Points”

The primary language of the event is English, unless otherwise indicated in the description.

The conference will take place at Strand Spa & Conference Hotel.

Monday, 17 August

10:15 Welcome coffee

10:30 Welcome and conference opening by Andero Uusberg

11:00 Keynote Speaker Halla B. Holmarsdottir – Care, Judgment, and Digital Lives: The Role of Science at Societal Turning Points

Professor at the Department of Primary and Secondary Teacher Education, Oslo Metropolitan University

We are living through a profound societal turning point shaped by rapid digital transformation, rising concerns about young people’s wellbeing, and deepening social inequalities. For children and young people, these dynamics are most visible in their everyday digital lives—spaces where relationships, learning, identity, and participation increasingly unfold. These changes are often framed as technological challenges, yet they point to deeper shifts in the social and relational conditions shaping contemporary life.

This keynote explores what these transformations reveal about wellbeing, not as an individual attribute, but as something emerging through relationships, institutions, and broader social contexts. Drawing on research on children’s and young people’s digital lives, the talk considers how digital environments both reflect and reconfigure the conditions under which connection, support, and belonging are experienced. At the same time, it raises questions about the growing pressures on attention, meaning-making, and the capacity to navigate uncertainty.

The keynote is grounded in two central ideas: care and judgment. Care is approached as a relational condition that underpins human development and social life, while judgment is understood as the capacity to think, discern, and act responsibly in complex and uncertain environments. Together, they offer a way of understanding both the possibilities and the fragilities of this moment.

At a time of rapid change, the talk reflects on how science can contribute not only to understanding these dynamics, but to shaping more connected, equitable, and humane futures.

12:00 Lunch

13:30 Methodology Labs

• • Indrek Seppo – Tools for vibe-research – quarto and beyond (Pirita, III floor)
    Indrek Seppo will introduce his preferred toolset for viberesearch (AI-aided research) and share his tips and tricks. You will see the power of quarto – a scientific publishing system perfectly mixing with R/Python — able to easily format production quality articles, presentations, handouts, books. We will also take a quick look at typst – the modern alternative to LaTeX. A paid tier subscription of either ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini is required to get the most out of it, but you can probably do the basic steps also with free tier. You need to have the following installed on your computer to be able to follow everything: Python, R, Node.js, quarto, typst, pandoc, Chatgpt codex or Claude code (requires paid plan) or Google Antigravity. Note that installing them all might not be possible on your work/university computer thanks to varying security setups. You will be amazed.

• • Andres Võrk – Põhjusliku järeldamise tööriistad majandusteadlastel (EST) (Paralepa, III floor)
    Töötoas saab ülevaate kvantitatiivsetest meetoditest, mida majandusteadlased kasutavad põhjuslike järelduste tegemisel. Meetodite ülevaatele järgnevad praktilised näited paneelandmete põhjal tarkvaras R, pakutakse ka Stata koodinäited. Eelnev kogemus R-i või Stataga on ka töötoas osalemise eelduseks.

• • Halla B. Holmarsdottir – From Numbers to Narratives: Mixed Methods for Studying Children and Young People’s Digital Worlds (Lahe main hall, V floor)
    This workshop introduces interdisciplinary mixed methods approaches to researching children and young people’s digital lives. Building on insights from the DigiGen project, it focuses on a central question: how and why digital technologies affect children and young people differently in their everyday lives. The workshop will demonstrate how combining quantitative and qualitative approaches can provide a more comprehensive understanding of digital experiences across family, education, leisure, and civic contexts. Through accessible examples and interactive exercises, participants will explore how to design simple mixed-methods studies, integrate diverse data sources, and better interpret complex phenomena related to young people’s wellbeing in the digital age. The session is designed to be beginner-friendly and does not require prior experience with mixed methods.

15:00 Coffee Break

15:30 Parallel Presentation Sessions

Parallel Session 1: Learner Development and Well-Being (Paralepa, III floor)

• Pirko Tõugu, Eve Kikas and Elina Malleus-Kotsegarov: Assessing Learning, Social, and Entrepreneurial Competencies in Basic School
• Eike Siilbek: How to Map the Socio-Organizational Networks on Which Well-Being Interventions Ultimately Depend: The Example of School-Based Mental Health Prevention
• Triin Lauri: Meritocratic Beliefs and EDUMERIT
• Ishita Pandey: Digital Parenting Profiles or Styles and Preschoolers’ Screen Media Use

Parallel Session 2: From Knowledge to Solutions and from Solutions to Knowledge (Pirita, III floor)

• Katri Pärna: The Genetics of Eating Disorder Symptoms Based on Estonian Biobank Data
• Kaijo Rüütsalu: The Effect of SMS Reminders on Participation in Cancer Screening
• Heidi Reinson: The Effect of Emails on Pension Contributions
• Kristjan Pilt, Einar Kivisalu, Moonika Viigimäe, Ivo Fridolin: Developments in Personalized Stress Monitoring Technology and Connections to the “Piloting a Stepped-Care Mental Health Support System” Project

Parallel Session 3: Data-Driven Approaches to Assessing and Supporting Well-Being (Pärnu, III floor)

• Vitali Sõritski: Development of a Point-of-Care Sensor for Non-Invasive Detection of Stress Biomarkers
• Laura Päeske & Safoora Masoumirad: Resting-State EEG in Mental Disorders and Fatigue
• Kelli Lehto: Trends in ADHD Diagnoses over 20 Years Based on Estonian Biobank Data
• Uku Vainik: Associations Between Genetic and Environmental Factors

Parallel Session 4: Science and Practice (Lahe main hall, V floor)

• Karin Streimann, Karin Lillemaa, Triin Vilms: The Role, Opportunities, and Capacity of Researchers in Bridging Science and Real Life
• Peeter Ross: Digitalization of Healthcare as a Service Sector
• Priit Kruus: Conducting Clinical Studies Using Real-World Data to Inform Societal Funding Decisions
• Andero Uusberg: The Dual-Wheel Model for Applying Behavioral Science

17:00 Physical Activity, Relaxation, and Free Time

18:30 Dinner

20:00 Entertainment Programme (Jurmala, III floor)

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Tuesday, 18 August

7:30 Morning run, walk, or swim

09:00 Introduction to the Second Day of the Conference

09:30 Keynote Speaker Petr Slovak – The Mind in Context: Generative AI for Scaffolding and Studying Everyday Cognitive Processes 

Reader in Human-Computer Interaction at King’s College London, with visiting appointments in KCL’s Child & Adolescent Psychology department and in Oxford’s Experimental Psychology and Human-centred AI groups

Many of the cognitive processes that underpin mental health — how we narrate experience, appraise situations, or reframe distressing thoughts — are linguistic, rule-governed, and unfold in the contexts of everyday action. This makes them newly tractable for generative AI. I will begin with a simple proof of concept, micro-narratives, an AI-supported method already used both for large-scale data collection (mapping the harms of social media) and to build datasets for foundational psychological research (on third-person appraisals). I then outline emerging work embedding similar approaches directly into psychological interventions, scaffolding skills such as reappraisal and decentering directly within daily life. Finally, I argue that this process-level scaffolding opens an unusual scientific opportunity: collecting mechanistic, in-situ data on the very processes we are trying to support — letting us measure, understand, and influence well-being in one loop.

10:30 Coffee Break

11:00 Methodology Labs

• • Petr Slovak & Dariana Dorin – From theory to testable flow: rapidly prototyping genAI-supported interventions (Pirita, III floor)
    This workshop picks up where the keynote leaves off: if generative AI lets us scaffold cognitive processes in daily life, how do we actually build and test such interventions without rebuilding everything from scratch each time? Building on our framework for translating psychological theories of change into reusable design “capabilities” (Slovak & Munson, 2024), we introduce infrastructure that lets researchers compose intervention flows (e.g., goal setting, reframing, reflection) that incorporate participant facing LLMs from modular steps, and rapidly translate structured intervention specifications into working, micro-randomised-trial-ready prototypes. Participants will work in small groups to map one psychological mechanism of their choosing into a draft intervention flow, refining it into a structured specification that can be instantiated by the infrastructure, before seeing one example translated live into a working prototype. No technical background will be needed; the aim is to think mechanistically about intervention design and leave with a concrete intervention specification together with an understanding of how such specifications can be rapidly translated into working prototypes.

• • Ejiroghene Wilkie – How to combine mobile self-report surveys with wearable and mobile sensing data (Pärnu, III floor)
    This hands-on workshop explores how to combine mobile self-report surveys with wearable and mobile sensing data. These repeated surveys are the basis of Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA/ESM), capturing how people think and feel in daily life. We’ll start with a brief intro to EMA and the concept of Just-In-Time Adaptive Interventions (JITAIs), highlighting how it opens the door to designing interventions that respond to participants in the moment. We’ll then cover sensing more broadly: what wearable and mobile sensing data you can collect, how it works, and the difference between always-on sensing and sensing only during a survey, grounded in real study examples. For the hands-on part, participants will build a simple study where a stress survey triggers a calming intervention, and I’ll demonstrate how to extend the same idea to wearable data. Participants will leave with both a clearer general understanding and a concrete sense of what’s practically possible.

• • Riina Hallik – From Literature Review to Publication: Methods, Search Strategies, and AI Opportunities (Lahe main hall, V floor)
    Literature reviews are among the most important foundations of scientific research and evidence-based practice, yet selecting and conducting the most appropriate review methodology is not always straightforward. This workshop provides a practical overview of the main types of literature reviews, including scoping reviews, narrative reviews, systematic reviews, and meta-analytic reviews, and discusses when each approach is most suitable. Participants will learn how to choose an appropriate review method, develop a search strategy, identify relevant databases, preregister their review protocol, and select suitable software tools for different stages of the review process. The workshop will also explore opportunities for using artificial intelligence in literature searching, screening, and evidence synthesis. Practical examples and discussions will help participants plan and manage future literature review projects more effectively and systematically.
  • Katrin Tiidenberg – “Sitting with a post,” contextual analysis of social media content (Paralepa, III floor)
    Participants are encouraged to bring 1–2 social media posts they find analytically interesting (screenshot or link).This workshop introduces “sitting with a post” – a qualitative method for contextual, multimodal analysis of social media content. Social media posts are modular, multimodal assemblages combining visual, textual, auditory, and hypertextual elements (images, captions, hashtags, audio, comments, metrics), and meaning emerges from their interplay, not from any single component. Drawing on Tiidenberg’s ongoing work on visual social media, participants will work through the method step by step: identifying the analytical context, interpreting each modal component separately and together, and attending to intertextual relations between them. The workshop uses an analytical template to guide hands-on practice with real or fabricated social media posts. Participants will leave with a practical skill they can apply to their own research and a deeper understanding of multimodal meaning-making on platforms.

12:30 Lunch

14:00 Breakthrough Projects Session

15:30 Coffee Break

16:00 Guided Discussion Sessions

• Mare Ainsaar & Oliver Nahkur – Future well-being research in Estonia (Pärnu, III floor)
  The main topics covered are practical research challengers of well-being research, e-book development and round 2 questionnaire development of the longitudinal study.
  Participants who are participating in an e-book writing session or are planning to submit a research application for next round(s) of a LongEstwell survey are especially warmly welcomed in the session.
  Please register for the session and we shall design the session according to the needs of participants.
  We cover also the topic of possibilities of science influencing the challenges of society.
• Priit Kruus & Peeter Ross – Beyond the Trial: Shared Standards and the Path from Real-World Data to Real-World Evidence (Pirita, III floor)
  Health and wellbeing data is being collected everywhere by clinics, devices, researchers, and apps. Yet it rarely connects into something we can actually trust and reuse. This session opens two linked discussions. First, we explore standardisation: what common rules, concepts, and agreements would let different data sources work together meaningfully. Second, we ask the harder question about the use of that standardised data – Can real-world data be used to assess health technologies and inform decisions, or do we still need randomised controlled trials? No prior expertise is required; the goal is to think together and bring your own perspective.
• Vladimir Tomberg, Igor Mattias, Aishah Shah – Incubation Workshop: Developing a National Digital Biomarkers Research Infrastructure (Paralepa, III floor)
  Wearable devices generate rich longitudinal data that remain largely underused in health and social science research. Could these data become part of a national research infrastructure? This workshop explores that question through a real-world case study and a discussion on future collaboration.
  Most health and wellbeing research relies on traditional sources of data, such as questionnaires, interviews, clinical assessments, and official statistics. The researchers either collect their data by asking users or use statistical data collected by national agencies.
  Digital Biomarker Data is an increasingly valuable complementary source of information. Digital biomarker data range from raw sensor measurements, such as heart rate, perspiration, and step count, to higher-level indicators including stress, sleep quality, and physical activity.
  Some individuals have accumulated years of personal digital biomarker data through wearable devices, while many others are interested in collecting such data but remain uncertain about its research potential and practical applications.
  In this workshop, we will show an example of a national digital biomarker dataset from the Swiss research project Providemus. Our colleague, a doctoral researcher in Information Systems from the University of Geneva, Igor Mattias, will share his experience of collecting digital biomarker data over two years, how he motivated users to use smart watches for such a long period, and how these data have been used to continuously monitor brain health in real-world conditions.
• Farhat-Ul-Ain & Kenn Konstabel – Exploring the Application, Adaptation, and Understanding of Interaction Design Tools in Behavioural Science Research and Practice (Lahe main hall, V floor)
  The workshop aims to introduce interaction design methods, tools and the Digital Health Behavior Change (DHBC) Toolkit to behavioral science experts and health psychologists. The DHBC toolkit is developed to support multidisciplinary teams in designing theory-informed digital behavior change interventions. It comprises a set of theory-enriched resources that integrate psychological theory with interaction design tools to facilitate the effective use of behavioral theory throughout the design process. The workshop will include an open discussion, allowing participants to share their experiences, insights, and challenges related to designing digital behavior change interventions and working within multidisciplinary teams.

17:30 Physical Activity, Relaxation, and Free Time

18:30 Dinner

20:00 Award Ceremony & Entertainment Programme (Jurmala, III floor)

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Wednesday, 19 August

8:30 Morning run, walk, or swim

10:00 Introduction to the Third Day of the Conference

10:30 Guided Discussion Sessions

• Aishah Shah – AI-Agent-Based Social Media Data Collection and Workflow Automation (Pärnu, III floor)
  This session introduces participants to the possibilities of automating social media data collection through workflow automation. The aim is to demonstrate how repetitive data collection tasks can be streamlined through automated workflows, making research and monitoring activities more efficient, scalable, and reproducible. Participants will explore how data from social media platforms can be automatically collected, processed, stored, and prepared for analysis with minimal manual intervention. Through practical examples, the session highlights how reusable data collection pipelines can reduce manual effort, improve consistency, and support a wide range of research, communication, and decision-making applications without requiring extensive technical expertise.
• Oliver Nahkur & Kristi Asser – Estonian child well-being indicators (EST) (Paralepa, III floor)
  Selles sessioonis tutvustatakse Sotsiaalministeeriumi tellitud projekti „Eesti lapse heaolu kontseptuaalse mudeli väljatöötamine ja vastavate indikaatorite arendamine“ raames välja töötatud Eesti lapse heaolu mudeli indikaatoreid. Osalejatel on võimalus anda nendele indikaatoritele tagasisidet.
• Kaili Rimfled, Triin Lauri & Kelli Lehto – The Untapped Potential of Genetic, Registry, School Context, and Well-Being Data (Lahe main hall, V floor)
  In this workshop, we will explore the research of Kaili Rimfeld, which integrates genetic, registry, and educational data to gain a deeper understanding of learning, well-being, and mental health. We will discuss the new opportunities created by linking these different data sources and consider how such approaches could be applied in Estonian educational research and policymaking.
  This workshop is part of the EduWell (EstWell educational research breakthrough project) that seek for the collaboration between different experts in EstWell and builds on developments within the IMO data infrastructure that develops the linkage of data from various administrative registers and survey sources.
• Leonore Riitsalu & Silja-Riin Voolma – An Integrated Model of Health & Financial Wellbeing: Towards a Unified Framework for Individual and Community levels (Pirita, III floor)
  Health and financial wellbeing are increasingly recognized as foundational domains, each shaping the other through a shared biopsychosocial stress pathway. This workshop will introduce an evolving integrated model linking individual and community levels: surviving-to-flourishing continuums, perceived and objective indicators, and an interdependence mechanism connecting personal and collective resources. Participants will begin with brief self-assessments of their own financial and health wellbeing, then engage with the proposed framework before moving into group discussion on its assumptions, components, and outstanding questions. The session aims to surface critical perspectives that will inform ongoing development of this framework toward publication and future research applications.

12:00 Lunch

13:30 Panel Discussion: How Can We Bring Science into Practice?

Moderators: Taavi Tillmann
Panelists: Maris Jesse, Katrin Lõhmus, Heli Laarmann, Silja-Riin Voolma, Mikk Vainik

If a researcher wishes to promote evidence-informed policymaking, how close should their relationship become with civil servants, political parties, and politicians? If a researcher wishes to advance the development and implementation of evidence-based interventions and technological solutions, how close should their relationship become with a particular product category, a specific product, or a specific producer?

15:00 Coffee
15:30 Departure Home