Bio and Research

I am a PhD Candidate at the University of Washington’s Information School. I have studied data privacy and security in a variety of contexts, including home IoT devices, email phishing attacks, and mental health management. My dissertation examines the practical realities that arise from emerging state-level US data privacy right of access laws, with a particular focus on how data subjects experience these laws and whether these laws are creating actionable transparency for data subjects.

Understanding modern privacy and security problems requires traversing traditional intellectual boundaries to fully understand their social impacts, particularly around questitons of fairness, equity, and exploitation. As a PhD student, I actively pursued this interdisciplinary experience by working to understand how other domains understand the world. I have worked with collaborators beyond my base domain of information science, including computer science, art and design, and political science. These collaborations helped me develop a suite of research and technical skills, including qualitative and quantitative research methods, software development and, most importantly, productively working on technology problems with both technical and non-technical collaborators. I have used these skills to, among other things, create research infrastructure for evaluating anti-phishing warnings, develop bespoke network-connected devices, and create curricular activities to bridge technical and social science concepts for information security students. I particularly enjoy teaching ethics in technical focused courses and teaching social science students how to use technical tools as a way to foster interdisciplinary work.