Marshini Chetty

About

Marshini Chetty is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Chicago, where she directs the Amyoli Internet Research Laboratory (AIR lab). Her research specializes in human-computer interaction, usable privacy and security, and ubiquitous computing. She designs, implements, and evaluates technologies to help users manage various aspects of Internet use, including privacy, security, performance, and costs. Her work often focuses on resource-constrained settings and aims to inform Internet policy. Chetty's research explores the interfaces between people and technologies, with a particular emphasis on understanding and defending against emerging threats in our increasingly computational world. She is dedicated to making the Internet more trustworthy and inclusive by drawing on her expertise in human-computer interaction, privacy, security, and ubiquitous computing.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Computer Security
• Internet privacy
• Artificial Intelligence
• Physics
• Psychology
• Data science
• Engineering
• Business
• Astronomy

Selected publications

• Dark Patterns: Past, Present, and Future

  Queue · 2020 · 140 citations

  Dark patterns are an abuse of the tremendous power that designers hold in their hands. As public awareness of dark patterns grows, so does the potential fallout. Journalists and academics have been scrutinizing dark patterns, and the backlash from these exposures can destroy brand reputations and bring companies under the lenses of regulators. Design is power. In the past decade, software engineers have had to confront the fact that the power they hold comes with responsibilities to users and to…

  DOI

• Strengthening Children’s Privacy Literacy through Contextual Integrity

  Media and Communication · 2020 · 39 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Researchers and policymakers advocate teaching children about digital privacy, but privacy literacy has not been theorized for children. Drawing on interviews with 30 families, including 40 children, we analyze children’s perspectives on password management in three contexts—family life, friendship, and education—and develop a new approach to privacy literacy grounded in Nissenbaum’s contextual integrity framework. Contextual integrity equates privacy with appropriate flows of information, and w…

  DOI

• Dark patterns

  Communications of the ACM · 2020 · 38 citations

  The evolution of tricky user interfaces.

  DOI

• "Community Guidelines Make this the Best Party on the Internet": An In-Depth Study of Online Platforms' Content Moderation Policies

  2024-05-11 · 21 citations

  preprintOpen access

  Moderating user-generated content on online platforms is crucial for balancing user safety and freedom of speech. Particularly in the United States, platforms are not subject to legal constraints prescribing permissible content. Each platform has thus developed bespoke content moderation policies, but there is little work towards a comparative understanding of these policies across platforms and topics. This paper presents the first systematic study of these policies from the 43 largest online p…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Understanding Research Related to Designing for Children's Privacy and Security: A Document Analysis

  2023 · 18 citations

  Many children are growing up in a “digital-by-default” world, where technologies mediate many of their interactions. There is emerging consensus that those who design technology must support children's privacy and security. However, privacy and security are complex concepts that are challenging to design for, and centering the interests of children is similarly difficult. Through a document analysis of 90 HCI publications, we examine what problems and solutions designing for children's privacy a…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• TWC SBE: TTP Option: Medium: Collaborative: EPICA: Empowering People to Overcome Information Controls and Attacks

  NSF · $195k · 2016–2019

• SaTC: EDU: Collaborative: Connecting Contexts: Building Foundational Digital Privacy and Security Skills for Elementary School Children, Teachers, and Parents

  NSF · $231k · 2020–2024

Frequent coauthors

• Nick Feamster

  University of Chicago

  31 shared

• Arunesh Mathur

  21 shared

• Rebecca E. Grinter

  Georgia Institute of Technology

  15 shared

• Brennan Schaffner

  12 shared

• Jessica Vitak

  University of Maryland, College Park

  11 shared

• Arvind Narayanan

  11 shared

• Tamara Clegg

  University of Maryland, College Park

  10 shared

• W. Keith Edwards

  Georgia Institute of Technology

  7 shared

Labs

• Amyoli Internet Research LabPI

Education

• Ph.D., Human-Computer Interaction

  University of California, Berkeley

  2009

• M.S., Computer Science

  University of California, Berkeley

  2004

• B.S., Computer Science

  University of California, Berkeley

  2002

Awards & honors

• 2026 Future of Privacy Forum’s 2026 Privacy Papers for Polic…
• 2023 Best Paper Honorable Mention, CHI
• 2021 CAREER Award Best Paper Honorable Mention, CHI
• 2019 10th annual privacy papers for policymakers (PPPM) awar…
• Distinguished paper award, SOUPS

Similar researchers at University of Chicago

• Ian Fosterh-150
• Michael Franklinh-97
• David Cashh-75