Governance, Privacy and Security Research Lab

Welcome to the GPS Research Lab—where we are all about designing and developing socio-technical solutions to support users and organizations in the tricky terrain of governance, privacy, and security! Think of us as your friendly navigators , supporting to identify and work towards solutions to mitigate emerging security and privacy issues and data mishaps. We study people's privacy/security concerns, decision-making, and behavior and leverage those inisghts to design and develop solutions. Picture this: a team of ‘GPS’ (Governance, Privacy, and Security) enthusiast — huddled around a giant map, plotting routes that lead to a digital world where individuals feel secure and organizations operate with trust.
Our research group employs both qualitative and quantitative methods, including surveys, interviews, experiments, server log analyses, Internet measurement studies. Our work also involves iterative design processes that consist of studying users, building prototypes, and evaluating them empirically.

Our research lab focuses on three primary areas:
Usable Privacy and Security: We design usable mechanisms to support individuals from diverse backgrounds to protect their privacy and security. For example, we have developed datasets (BivPriv, Biv-Priv-Seg) and tool (BivPriv App, GuardLens) to maintain the privacy of various media (e.g., website, images, videos), often emphasizing on marginalized and underserved populations. We also design and evaluate tools to verify uniqueness of human and characteristics while highlighting the significance of usability and accessibility in those tools’ design.
Data and Model Governance: We investigate issues at the intersection of computing and society, particularly within data-driven systems. Our current research focuses on developing and interpreting principles of data privacy (such as Data Minimization), exploring the impact of organizational structures on data and decision autonomy, and incorporating democratic and decentralized design principles into mainstream data and model governance (e.g. AI Governance).
Usable Crypto: We design and develop accessible and easy-to-understand cryptographic solutions that mitigate security risks, such as usable decentralized key management systems (e.g., MFKDF). We also redesign accessible tools, like cryptocurrency wallets to support varying levels of technical expertise and abilities.