Alumna spotlight: Celine (Ziqing) Mo

Celine Mo (MSc Clinical Mental Health Sciences, UCL) is the founder of Bubble Forest, a youth mental health and personal growth platform in Zhongshan, Guangdong, in China’s Greater Bay Area.

UCL alum Ziqing (Celine) Mo presents to her start-up team.

12 December 2025

Tell us more about yourself and Bubble Forest.

I grew up in Zhongshan, Guangdong, and went to boarding school from the age of seven. At fourteen, I moved to Singapore to study at Hwa Chong International School, where I completed the IB. Growing up away from home so young shaped my independence, but it also made me acutely aware of how emotional support, family connection and psychological safety influence a young person’s development.

I later studied Psychological and Behavioural Sciences, where my interest in youth mental health deepened, particularly in psychopathology and adolescent wellbeing. After my MSc in Clinical Mental Health Sciences at UCL, the idea for Bubble Forest (泡泡森林) emerged quite naturally. Today, Bubble Forest is a youth mental health and personal growth platform based in Zhongshan that combines psychology, neuroscience, and technology to deliver mindfulness training, emotional-regulation programmes, and immersive learning experiences for children and adolescents.

What challenges are young people facing that your startup is helping tackle?

Young people in the Greater Bay Area are growing up with intense academic pressure, heavy screen use and rapidly changing social expectations. Many struggle with low resilience, emotional dysregulation and attention difficulties, which can affect both learning and relationships at home and in school.

Because I spent much of my childhood in boarding schools and away from home, I am particularly sensitive to what it feels like to navigate stress, independence and family distance as a young person. That is why Bubble Forest focuses on preventative, education-focused support rather than waiting until problems escalate.

Through school- and community-based programmes, Bubble Forest offers evidence-based education for students, parents and educators. Since August 2023, we have delivered over 3,000 programme attendances across more than ten partner schools and youth centres, supporting 7–17-year-olds and the adults who care for them.

How did your UCL MSc shape Bubble Forest’s approach?

My MSc in Clinical Mental Health Sciences at UCL was a turning point. I chose UCL because it offered a uniquely strong programme that combined rigorous clinical grounding with access to London’s rich mental health ecosystem, including hospitals, research units and placement opportunities. What stood out most was the quality of teaching: I learned from an exceptional faculty team whose expertise, professionalism and care for students left a lasting impression.

The Children and Adolescents’ Mental Health module, in particular, helped me understand how the mental health ecosystem, including hospitals, research units, and culturally sensitive skills, now informs my work every day at Bubble Forest. Working under Professor Sonia Johnson at the NIHR Policy Research Unit deepened my understanding of digital mental health policy, which shapes how we design and govern our digital services. My dissertation with Nicola White, later published, introduced me to VR-based mental health interventions, and those insights feed directly into our immersive programmes today.

A big part of my motivation is bringing what I learned at UCL back to benefit young people in China.

How do you use AI to improve your programmes?

During our sessions, we use AI to notice early signs of stress or disengagement—for instance, changes in voice tone, facial expression or how a student speaks during activities.

These data insights allow us to adapt in real time: adjusting the pace, difficulty and type of mindfulness or emotional-regulation exercise, and providing facilitators with specific follow-up suggestions. In practice, this means each young person receives a more personalised, responsive experience rather than a one-size-fits-all curriculum.

How do you ensure clinical oversight, data privacy and parental consent for under-18s?

Working with under-18s, we place clinical safety and data ethics at the centre of everything we do. All programmes are designed under the supervision of licensed clinical psychologists and reviewed using evidence-based protocols.

For children and adolescents, we follow strict parental-consent procedures, use anonymised data handling wherever possible, and apply privacy-by-design principles to our technology. We also explain to parents, schools and young people how data will—and will not—be used, so our practice remains transparent as well as safe.

Tell us about a collaboration that made you proud, and how it helped participants.

We recently partnered with a local public school to deliver a six-week resilience and emotion-regulation course for 120 students. The programme combined psychoeducation, practical calming techniques and group reflection.

By the end of the course, teachers reported better classroom focus and fewer behavioural incidents. Students told us they “finally learned tools to calm down” when they felt overwhelmed—whether before exams, during conflicts with peers or at home. For me, the most meaningful outcome was seeing students actively practising these tools in their everyday lives.

What support did UCL offer that helped you take the first steps developing your startup?

UCL Careers and UCL Innovation & Enterprise helped me see that entrepreneurship could be a natural extension of my academic and personal journey. Having experienced different education systems in China, Singapore, Cambridge and London, I knew I wanted to build something for children and adolescents—but I did not yet have the tools to turn that into a real venture.

UCL Careers’ resources on “working for yourself” gave me the language and confidence to imagine paths beyond traditional clinical or research roles. From UCL Innovation & Enterprise, especially through extracurricular entrepreneurship workshops and programmes at BaseKX – UCL’s dedicated entrepreneurship hub in King’s Cross – I learned to think about business models, impact and communication, and how to turn a mission like “improving youth mental health” into a sustainable, scalable service. The frameworks and tools I picked up there still guide how I shape Bubble Forest today.

I am also grateful to be part of the UCL Chinese alumni community, which keeps that relationship with UCL alive after graduation and continues to open up new conversations and opportunities for both me and Bubble Forest.

Do you have any tips for students and alumni wanting to turn evidence-based psychology into a real venture?

Start from strong evidence—but do not wait for everything to be perfect. Build simple prototypes, test them with real users and be willing to translate complex theories into tools that young people and families can actually use in daily life. Listen carefully to feedback, including from those who are sceptical, and keep iterating. The bridge between psychology and practice is built one small, practical experiment at a time.

What’s next for Bubble Forest?

Our next milestone is to launch a full online platform that brings together all our programmes—mental wellbeing, online career exploration and gamified family-based tools—so that evidence-based psychology becomes accessible to families across China, not only those near our physical locations.

Over the coming years, we will also strengthen our AI capabilities to provide more personalised insights and companion-style support for young users, always with clear clinical oversight and strong data protections. The vision is for Bubble Forest to grow from a local initiative into a trusted, scalable support system for young people’s mental health and growth.

Featured image

UCL alum Celine Mo presents to her start-up team.