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 human-computer interaction, security and privacy, and tech policy. Broadly, I am investigating how we can reimagine notice and consent and move towards sustainable, responsible, and human-centred data collection for users and AI co-generators (such as workers). My research makes the following contributions:

1. Understand the consent ecosystem under the GDPR, beyond the user interface;
2. Mitigate emerging challenges to consent (i.e., informing consent guidelines for GenAI data collection); and
3. Propose a collective data governance framework for consent based on insights from 1 and 2

My work has garnered interest amongst privacy, and AI ethics stakeholders across Europe and North America such as the Future of Privacy Forum, French Data Protection Authority (CNIL), UC Berkeley Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity, 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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