Michaela Forrai is a predoctoral researcher at the Department of Communication at the University of Vienna. In November 2023, she joined the VMCI Lab, where she works on her dissertation (supervised by Univ.-Prof. Dr. Desirée Schmuck) on young people's use of artificial intelligence and how this relates to their well-being. Further research interests generally concern the areas of media change and media innovation, media psychology, and health communication, such as (social) media use and well-being/mental health/suicide prevention.

Ela studied Communication Science (MSc, 2022) and Journalism and Communication Studies (BA, 2019) at the University of Vienna. She has been working at the Department of Communication since 2018 and was part of several research projects by Assoc.-Prof. Dr. Florian Arendt as well as the Advertising and Media Psychology Research Group, led by Univ.-Prof. Dr Jörg Matthes.