Skip to main content
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
Campus & Community
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • University Statements
  • Syracuse University Impact
  • |
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
Sections
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • University Statements
  • Syracuse University Impact
  • |
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
Campus & Community

Combating Graduate School Stress, One Click at a Time

Monday, May 22, 2017, By Elizabeth Droge-Young
Share
entrepreneurshipStudentstechnology

Like all of Luka Negoita’s Ph.D. work on plant biology, his latest venture began with an experiment. But this time he didn’t investigate the vegetation of central New York, he turned the microscope on the Ph.D. process.

“Grad school is a very stressful and mentally challenging experience for a lot of people, myself included,” Negoita says.

HabitU screenshot

A screenshot of the smartphone application for HabitU from the website. The program is currently looking for beta testers.

To combat the all-too-common stressors of academic life, Negoita tested a smattering of the 80,000 wellness apps on the market, but found them too prescriptive, or even too stressful, to use. Taking notes from his own journey and leveraging student entrepreneurial services on campus, he created HabitU: a new mobile application to help users develop desired habits while reducing stress in the process.

“I had this epiphany that my stress was linked to feeling out of control. I realized that doing a few things in particular, even as simple as spending five minutes washing the dishes, brought back some of the control I was missing,” Negoita says

After tracking habits in spreadsheets for over a year, Negoita decided to turn his personal tinkering into a publicly available tool. To go from concept to app, he tapped into Syracuse’s free entrepreneurial resources, including mentorship and professional business services from the Whitman School of Management’s Couri Hatchery and the Blackstone Launchpad at Bird Library.

The end product is an easy-to-follow path to self-improvement, Negoita says. HabitU is simple to use: just make a list of tasks that your “ideal self” would do daily, assign tasks a difficulty rating and tally your progress—the app takes care of encouraging you to improve over time.

“Habit-tracking applications are fantastic tools for staying organized, being more productive and building healthy habits, but can often be complicated or stress-inducing,” says mental health promotion specialist Kristelle Aisaka from Syracuse’s Office of Health Promotion. “HabitU takes those useful habit-tracking features and integrates them into an easily navigated, low-stress interface.”

A compassionate and personalized approach separates HabitU from other available habit tracking apps, Negoita says. HabitU employs an algorithm to suggest daily point goals shaped by an individual’s past performance, including cutting users some slack when appropriate.

“HabitU pushes you by learning from your successes and providing progressively more challenging goals over time—but it does this in a very kind way. If you don’t complete a task one day, that’s fine. You can do another in its place, or just skip it for now. HabitU pushes you with personalized daily goals that account for the fact that we all have bad days.” Negoita says.

An early tester of the app, biology Ph.D. student Alex Ebert, echoes HabitU’s unique approach: “This is exactly the way a good habit-building app should work: it doesn’t feel like a chore, it doesn’t guilt me for having a bad day, and the flexibility keeps me excited about fulfilling the items on my list!”

For now, Negoita is seeking beta testers for HabitU, beefing up the website with developer Max Matthews ’16 and designer David Badillo; and finishing up his dissertation work for May 2018. Ultimately, he envisions HabitU growing into “the go-to app for personal development,” with the ability to integrate data from niche wellness apps, like Headspace and Fitbit. And with a couple local start-up competitions under his belt, including an award for Student Entrepreneur of the Year from the Entrepreneurship and Emerging Enterprises program at the Whitman School, he is headed in the right direction.

“The early beta we’ve seen from Luka and his team has been very promising,” says Aisaka. ”We’re looking forward to see how HabitU continues to grow and evolve.”

  • Author

Elizabeth Droge-Young

  • Recent
  • Student Veteran Anthony Ruscitto Honored as a Tillman Scholar
    Friday, July 18, 2025, By John Boccacino
  • Bandier Students Explore Latin America’s Music Industry
    Thursday, July 17, 2025, By Keith Kobland
  • Architecture Students’ Project Selected for Royal Academy Exhibition
    Thursday, July 17, 2025, By Julie Sharkey
  • NSF I-Corps Semiconductor and Microelectronics Free Virtual Course Being Offered
    Wednesday, July 16, 2025, By Cristina Hatem
  • Jianshun ‘Jensen’ Zhang Named Interim Department Chair of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
    Wednesday, July 16, 2025, By Emma Ertinger

More In Campus & Community

Bandier Students Explore Latin America’s Music Industry

Thirteen students from the Bandier Program in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications recently returned from a three-week journey through Latin America, where they explored the region’s dynamic and rapidly evolving music industry. The immersive trip, led by Bandier…

Maxwell’s Robert Rubinstein Honored With 2025 Wasserstrom Prize for Graduate Teaching

Robert Rubinstein, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and professor of international relations in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, is the recipient of the 2025 Wasserstrom Prize for Graduate Teaching. The prize is awarded annually to a faculty member…

National Ice Cream Day: We Tried Every Special at ’Cuse Scoops So You Don’t Have To

National Ice Cream Day is coming up on Sunday, July 20, and what better way to celebrate than with a brain freeze and a sugar rush? Armed with spoons and an unshakable sense of duty, members of the Syracuse University…

Message From Chief Student Experience Officer Allen W. Groves

Dear Members of the Orange Community: It is with profound sadness that I write to remember two members of our Syracuse University community, whose lives were cut short last Thursday when they were struck by a vehicle at the intersection…

Haowei Wang Named Maxwell School Scholar in U.S.-China/Asia Relations

Haowei Wang, assistant professor of sociology in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, has been named the Yang Ni and Xiaoqing Li Scholar in U.S.-China/Asia Relations for the 2025-26 academic year. Wang’s one-year appointment began on July 1….

Subscribe to SU Today

If you need help with your subscription, contact sunews@syr.edu.

Connect With Us

  • X
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
Social Media Directory

For the Media

Find an Expert Follow @SyracuseUNews
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
  • @SyracuseU
  • @SyracuseUNews
  • Social Media Directory
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy
  • Campus Status
  • Syracuse.edu
© 2025 Syracuse University News. All Rights Reserved.