Celia Nocivelli builds wearable device to track athlete anxiety

“I would say there was a lot of times where simple things, just like entering the film room, it would cause me to have this intense anxiety,” Celia Nocivelli recalled of her time standing on the sidelines as a student athlete at Boston University, bu.edu reported.

Key Clinical Takeaways:
• Celia Nocivelli spent the summer in the Enlight Fellowship building a wearable chest device that tracks when athletes enter fight-or-flight anxiety states.
• Nocivelli’s research traced a significant portion of student-athlete anxiety directly back to coaching behaviors and the existing power imbalance.
• The anonymized data gathered by the device is intended for athletic departments and law firms to identify harmful coaching practices.

Nocivelli spent four years as a student athlete at Boston University before graduating this spring with a degree in psychology. During her time on campus, she experienced intense anxiety that she lacked a name for and felt unable to share with anyone. Returning to BU Wheelock in the fall for a master’s in counseling and sports psychology, she used her time in the Enlight Fellowship to tackle a problem she lived through personally: athletes struggling with mental health while facing heavy stigma and discomfort in reaching out for help.

Building a Wearable Device for Athlete Anxiety

Through her own research into the problem, Nocivelli uncovered a specific dynamic underlying the mental health struggles of athletes. A substantial amount of their anxiety traced back to coaches’ behavior. Because of the inherent power imbalance between athletes and coaches, speaking up about these pressures remained nearly impossible for many competitors.

Her response to this systemic gap is a wearable chest device designed to track physiological markers when athletes enter fight-or-flight anxiety states during their sport. The collected data remains anonymized before being routed to athletic departments and law firms. This mechanism provides institutional oversight, giving organizations a concrete way to identify which specific coaching behaviors push athletes into acute stress states and allowing them to intervene.

Pairing Sensor Data with Peer Support

Alongside the hardware, Nocivelli developed an accompanying app focused on peer support. The software allows teammates to observe when a peer has experienced a difficult day and provides a direct channel to check in on them. “If they’re ever going through something, they know that they have a peer community that will be there to support them,” Nocivelli said, according to bu.edu.

Entering the Enlight Fellowship presented a distinct learning curve, as Nocivelli possessed no prior business background. She noted that she lacked familiarity with financial terminology, the structural differences between nonprofit and for-profit entities, and the foundational steps of launching a venture. However, working alongside a diverse cohort of students from various countries, schools, and academic disciplines quickly overshadowed those initial gaps. Collaborating with peers working on entirely unrelated ventures turned out to be an unexpected highlight of the fellowship experience.

The Fellowship Cohort Experience

During the opening weeks of the fellowship, Nocivelli possessed a clear sense of what she cared about and what she wanted to avoid—specifically, building yet another generic app—without knowing the precise shape of her final project. While other cohort members appeared to arrive with fully formed concepts, her own direction emerged gradually through weeks of conversation with Katie and fellow participants who helped her refine the idea until it clicked into place.

“It was just such a great aha moment for me,” Nocivelli said, as reported by bu.edu, describing the realization that she had found the exact concept she wanted to bring to life. Reflecting on the process, she offered straightforward advice for incoming students considering the program: leave comparisons at the door, enter with motivation and an open mind, and focus on growing alongside peers.

Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is for educational and scientific communication purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare provider regarding any medical condition, diagnosis, or treatment plan.