I am a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan School of Information and Department of Computer Science & Engineering, advised by Kentaro Toyama. My research in Human-Computer Interaction and Social Computing develops consentful systems, which re-envision how users of social technologies grant consent to tackle issues around privacy, safety, and power.

My claim is that consent is a better framework for considering a range of privacy, permissions, and related issues, because traditional permission models tend to be system and outcome-centric, whereas consent is inherently user-centric and process-focused. Permission models tend to be based on engineers' or lawyers' conception of privacy, where ease of programming or fidelity to some policy is the primary goal. But, the forms of information exchange that people consent to are dependent on identities and relationships, and privacy settings do not come close to representing such complexity. A consent focus would not be satisfied until users can adjust who they interact with, clearly, easily, flexibly, and at any time. During my PhD, I have:

• theorized what affirmative consent is—drawing from feminist literature, which stresses a culture of care and impacts on marginalized groups, I proposed a theoretical framework of affirmative consent to reimagine social platforms (CHI 2021)
• built consentful systems and interfaces—e.g., Moa, a platform that enables sensitive information-sharing among people with less power, by letting users flexibly and precisely carve out an audience per post/comment through "consent boundaries"; consent-granting mechanisms regarding tech companies' data collection and algorithmic inferences (CHI 2023, CHI 2024)

Ulitmately, my goal is to reimagine forms of human-computer interactions where users are thoroughly respected, to support more effective and ethical computing. My post-PhD research agenda includes: 1) embedding consent into the AI/ML model development lifecycle and 2) building consentful systems for collective action in risky contexts, especially when it's hard to find potential allies.

My research has been recognized with a Meta Research PhD Fellowship (selected on my fourth try), University of Michigan Barbour Scholarship, EECS Rising Star, and two honorable mentions. I am on the academic job market for 2024-2025.