About Me

Hi! My name is Lin (she/her). I am a PhD student at the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy (MPI-SP) where I am supervised by Asia Biega in the Responsible Computing Group.

My work sits at the intersection of security and privacy, human-computer interaction, and tech policy. I use empirical user research methods from human-computer interaction to research how we can move towards more responsible data collection, centered on consent as a foundation for building ethical technologies. My research makes the following contributions:
1) Improve and understand the consent ecosystem under the GDPR beyond the user interface;
2) Mitigate emerging challenges to consent (i.e., informing consent and responsible data collection guidelines for GenAI); and
3) Propose a collective data governance framework for consent based on insights from 1 and 2, which could give people more leverage over their data

My work has garnered interest amongst privacy, industry, trade union, and AI ethics stakeholders across Europe and North America. I have presented and discussed my work with: the Future of Privacy Forum, French Data Protection Authority (CNIL), UC Berkeley Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity, the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), the Montreal AI Ethics Institute, the JP Morgan AI Research Group, and NOYB. My work has also won the Council of Europe’s 2024 Rodotà Award for an original and innovative contribution to data protection.

Education

PhD in Computer Science at the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy (MPI-SP) (Bochum, Germany)
Supervisor: Asia Biega
Thesis topic: Reimagining Online Consent for Responsible, Human-Centric and Sustainable Data Collection
September 2021 - Present

Visiting Researcher at University of Oxford (Oxford, UK)
Hosted by the Human-Centred Computing Group, Department of Computer Science
September - December 2023

MA in Human-Computer Interaction at Carleton University (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada)
Thesis: “End User Mental Models of Social Engineering Attacks” PDF
2019 - 2021

BA (Honours) in Psychology at Queen’s University (Kingston, Ontario, Canada)
2015 - 2019

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