I am a human computer interaction researcher studying how people interact with and understand computing systems that bring together people, data, and machine learning technologies. These systems are “black boxes”: the people who use them can see and experience the inputs and outputs, but not the inner logic. This makes it very difficult to understand and reason about how they work, and to envision what the consequences of using them might be for individuals and society.

For example, it is hard enough for end users of computing systems to be aware of the data that is collected about them, but it’s even harder to understand how that data can be used to categorize their personal characteristics or activities, to make predictions about their future behavior and interests, and to infer sensitive, private information. I’m working to discover ways to help people take back some agency over the data they provide to the apps and platforms they use, so that they will have a way to influence what these systems can do and how they affect the world.

I am currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Information, of the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University. My research right now is funded by NSF SaTC award CNS-1524296, and by an endowment to MSU from AT&T. Some keywords to describe my research are: algorithmic curation, personalization, automation, digital privacy, derived data, ubiquitous computing, and sociotechnical systems.

Some things I’ve been up to lately…

• Why Johnny Can’t Unsubscribe: Barriers to Stopping Unwanted Email, a paper I coauthored with Jayati Dev and Sameer Patil from Indiana University, will be published at CHI 2020.

• Samantha Hautea will be presenting a poster at CHI 2020 that we worked on together, along with Anjali Munasinghe, titled “That’s Not Me”: Surprising Algorithmic Inferences

• Norbert Nthala will be presenting a poster at CHI 2020 that we worked on together, titled Towards a Conceptual Model for Provoking Privacy Speculation

• I served as co-chair for the Privacy and Security subcommittee of CHI 2020.

• I participated in the public television program Media Meet, on WNMU-TV, affiliated with Northern Michigan University. The episode titled, “Social Media, Social Issues” aired on Sept 1, 2019 and was repeated on Sept 21 and 22, 2019.

• I presented my latest paper, Wait, Do I Know This Person?: Understanding Misdirected Email at CHI 2019 (May 2019)

• I was interviewed for a WILX-TV news piece, City wants data shared about electric scooters about the privacy implications of local ordinances requiring electric scooter companies to provide trip-level data to the cities of Lansing and East Lansing (March 2019)

• I presented a talk titled, Folk Theories of Security & Privacy at the Security, Privacy and Human Behavior seminar at RSA Conference 2019 (March 2019)