People

People

Leah Zhang-Kennedy

Assistant Professor

Leah Zhang-Kennedy is an Assistant Professor in interaction design and user experience research at the Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business, University of Waterloo. Her research focuses on understanding and improving privacy experiences and practices for various user segments using multidisciplinary methods in HCI and user experience design.

She is cross-appointed with the Department of Systems Design Engineering at the U of W and an Adjunct Research Professor in the School of Computer Science at Carleton University. She is a faculty member of the Waterloo Games Institute and Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute, and a member of Waterloo HCI.

Hilda Hadan

PhD candidate, Systems Design Engineering, University of Waterloo

Projects: Deceptive Design in Extended Reality; Gamified Learning about Cryptocurrency

Jen (JaeEun) Shin

PhD student, Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, University of Waterloo

Research interests: human-robot interaction; Inclusive design; ethical issues in Artificial Intelligence (AI); educational technology

Chen (Bella) An

Master's student in Computer Science

Research interests: virtual reality for telehealth and vulnerable groups, user experience, HCI
 

Shanza Shanza

Master's student in Computer Science

Research interests: Inclusive technology; cybersecurity and privacy

Michaela Valiquette

Master's student in Human-Computer Interaction

Research interests: User-centered design; accessibility; usable privacy

Research Assistants & Associates

Michaela Valiquette, Research Associate | Studio Q Designs, Research & Strategy Lead

Collaborators

We work closely with other researchers within and outside of U of Waterloo.

Waterloo

Lennart Nacke, Professor, and members of the HCI Games group

Ville Mäkelä, Assistant Professor, Stratford School

Yue Hu, Assistant Professor, and members of the A.I.R. Lab

Carleton University

Elizabeth Stobert, Assistant Professor, and members of the SPIRL lab

Hala Assal, Assistant Professor, and her research group in Systems and Computer Engineering

Sonia Chiasson, Professor, and members of the CHORUS Lab

Other

Sangho Suh, postdoctoral researcher, University of California, San Diego

Alumni

Graduate Students:

Undergraduate Research Assistants: 

  • (2023) Arya Dixit (Systems Design Engineering), Children and Parents’ Mental Models of Security and Privacy in Humanoid Robots, Research Assistant.
  • (2022) Amanda Tianyue Du (Global Business And Digital Arts), Privacy Storytelling in IoT, Research Assistant
  • (2021) Esha Kulkarni (Global Business and Digital Arts), Canadian Guidelines for Safe Wandering, User Interface designer
  • (2021) Kouthar Waled (Computer Science), Concept-driven Storytelling with Creativity Support for Privacy Concepts, Research Assistant

Interns:

  • (2024) Chetna Sharma, summer research intern 
  • (2023) An Chen, Mitacs Globalink Undergraduate Intern
  • (2022) Asmita Mehta, summer research intern 

Co-op Students:

  • (2022) Anthony Wu (Computer Science)
  • (2021) Winston So (Computer Engineering) 

Research Associates:

Rogers Research Partnerships

  • (2022) Sydney Lamorea, Project Manager
  • (2022) Saira Aziz, User Experience (UX) Researcher
  • (2022) Oluwafunminitemi (Temi) Oluwadare, Research Analyst
  • (2022) Yizhou (Lydon) Pan, User Interface Designer
  • (2022) Soda Li, User Interface Designer
  • (2022) Zhongze (Michael) Sun, Front-End Software Developer