We are professors, researchers, practitioners, and civil society activists aiming to study and expose gaps in privacy regimes across the world. We are studying the design and implementation of privacy by government agencies, industries, regulators, and civil society.
Ido Sivan-Sevilla (founder, PhD) is an assistant professor in UMD’s College of Information and affiliate professor in the School of Public Policy. He studies the governance of digital technologies, researching the design & implementation of tech policy issues through an array of methodologies including process-tracing analysis, computational text analysis, in-depth interviews, fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), computational web scraping and vulnerability analysis, and social network analysis. For more information, see his website or email him directly.
Jessica Vitak (PhD) is a professor in the University of Maryland’s iSchool and an affiliate professor in UMD’s Communication Department and the Joint Program in Survey Methodology (JPSM). She runs the Privacy Education and Research Lab (PEARL) and evaluates the privacy and ethical implications of new technologies that collect data in our homes, schools, and workplaces. She seeks to understand how privacy concerns play a role in technology adoption and use, and she develops tools and resources to help children and adults make more informed decisions when using technology and sharing sensitive data. Jessica is also a long-time member of the prestigious UMD Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL).
Michelle Mazurek (PhD) is an associate professor of computer science at the University of Maryland and the Director of Maryland’s Cybersecurity Center. Her research focuses on human-centered computer security. She is interested in understanding and influencing security and privacy behaviors and preferences by collecting real data from real users. Recently she has focused on topics including making security easier for professionals such as sysadmins and software developers, understanding how and why end users learn and apply security behaviors, and investigating adoption of end-to-end encrypted messaging. She also directs the Security, Privacy, People lab (SP2) within the Maryland Cybersecurity Center.
Patrick Parham is a Ph.D. student at the College of Information, University of Maryland (UMD). He has been studying advertising and media technology, and proposals addressing the deprecation of third-party cookies. Patrick previously worked in the programmatic advertising industry. He holds a BS in Radio-Television-Film from The University of Texas at Austin, a Master of Business Administration from Tulane University, and a Master of Science in Statistics from Baruch College.
