Risk and Resilience: Promoting Privacy and Online Safety by Empowering People through Human-Centered Computing

Dr. Wisniewski’s research expertise is situated at the juxtaposition of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Social Computing, and Privacy. She views privacy as a social mechanism that helps people regulate their interpersonal boundaries with others in a way that facilitates more meaningful connections and safer online interactions with others. Her research focuses on: 1) community-based approaches for helping people (adults and teens) co-manage their online privacy with people they trust, 2) teen-centric approaches to online safety that promote self-regulation and empower teens to effectively manage online risks, and 3) online safety interventions that protect our most vulnerable youth from severe online risks, such as sexual predation. Through the research trajectories above, she has become a leading HCI scholar at the intersections of adolescent online safety, developmental science, interaction design, and human-centered computing. She has created an exciting research program that intertwines research and education to engage teens, college students, experts in adolescent psychology, experts in participatory design and research methods, community partners, and industry stakeholders in a community-based effort to build the village needed to protect our youth from online risks by empowering them to protect themselves. During her talk, Dr. Wisniewski will give an overview of her on-going grant-funded research, as well as her career-long aspirations to empower people through human-centered computing.