News

In Fall 2024, we have three new Master's students joining the Safe Interactions Lab: An Bella Chen, Shanza Shanza, and Michaela Valiquette.

Bella was a summer exchange student participating in the Mitacs Globalink Undergraduate Internship program in 2023 and returning to Waterloo for a Master's degree to research the potential of virutal reality technology for telehealth.  Shanza is new to Waterloo and is interested to research and develop tools that prevent discriminatory behaviour in undereducated and non-weird communities. Michaela started a company after her undergrad, and is now pursuing a Master's degree in HCI to further her professional interests and skills. I look forward to working with these talented students with diverse research interests.

Welcome everyone!

Over the past six years as a member of the Waterloo Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute (CPI), Leah has been at the forefront of research in privacy conscious design and improving cybersecurity practices. From teaching students to creating novel design solutions to leading events, Leah takes full advantage of opportunities that cross her path in order to create maximum impact. However, her career trajectory was not always so crystal clear. Learn more about Leah and her career path in this article.

Our paper, “Navigating the Gray: Design Practitioners’ Mental Processes and Rationalization of Privacy Dark Patterns,” has been accepted for publication in the proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (CSCW). The manuscript will appear in the ACM Digital Library in April 2024.

Leah was one of five judges of the Student Design Competition at CHI Play 2023. Congratulations to the 8 finalists and the design competition winners under Technical Excellence, Experimental Gameplay, Societal Impact, and a fourth Audience Choice Award! It was great to meet the students and hear more about their work during their presentations and demos.

Christos Karanassios successfully defended his Master's Thesis in Human-Computer Interaction titled "Towards Security-Focused Developer Personas". Christos is co-supervised by Prof. Leah Zhang-Kennedy (University of Waterloo) and Prof. Hala Assal (Carleton University).

Congratulations Christos!

Our paper titled Comprehending the Crypto-Curious: How Investors and Inexperienced Potential Investors Perceive and Practice Cryptocurrency Trading led by Prof. Ville Mäkelä (Stratford School) and PhD Candidate Hilda Hadan is published in the International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction.

We welcome Jen (JaeEun) Shin, a new Ph.D. student in System Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo, to the Safe Interaction Lab in Fall 2023! Jen will start her research working on a project titled “Children and Parents’ Mental Models of Security and Privacy in Humanoid Robots” to investigate families’ perceptions of security and privacy risks associated with robots for education and entertainment.