[talks] Colloquium Speaker-Marshini Chetty, Tuesday, Feb 20

[Emily Lawrence]

CS Department Colloquium Speaker

Marshini Chetty, Princeton University

Tuesday, February 20, 2018 - 12:30pm

Computer Science - Room 105

Host: Prof. David Dobkin

 

"Parting the Cloud: Empowering End-Users through Internet Transparency"

 

Why is my Internet slow? Why have I run out of data again? Is my thermostat
talking to strangers? Internet users face seemingly simple questions like
these every time they connect to the Internet with increasingly significant
consequences for inaccurate information. Yet, as networks, applications, and
devices proliferate and become more complex, questions like these are
getting harder to answer. I study, design, build, and evaluate technologies
to help users answer these questions, by improving the "transparency" of the
networks, applications, and networked devices used to get online. My
research goal is to empower Internet users by providing them with accurate
and real-time information about, and control over, Internet performance,
costs, privacy, and security. By doing so, my work gives Internet users the
power to make well-informed decisions and agency for protecting themselves
against and holding others accountable for online malfeasance. My research
informs Internet policy by providing evidence of what kinds of transparency
Internet users require and respond to. In this talk, I describe why Internet
transparency is so important and how challenging it is to provide
transparency to end-users. I present three projects that make Internet
costs, online privacy and security, and Internet constraints more
transparent for end-users. These projects include a system for giving adult
users information and control over home broadband data usage, a prototype
for helping elementary school age children learn about and manage their own
Internet safety, and a mixed method approach for understanding how Internet
constraints affect end-users in developing countries. I conclude the talk
with open questions for making the Internet more transparent for end-users.

 

Bio:

Marshini Chetty is a research scholar in the Department of Computer Science
at Princeton University where she directs the Princeton Human-Computer
Interaction Laboratory. She specializes in human-computer interaction,
usable security, and ubiquitous computing.  Marshini designs, implements,
and evaluates technologies to help users manage different aspects of
Internet use from performance, costs to privacy and security. She often
works in resource-constrained settings and uses her work to help inform
Internet policy. She has a Ph.D. in Human-Centered Computing from Georgia
Institute of Technology, USA and a Masters and Bachelors in Computer Science
from University of Cape Town, South Africa. Prior to joining Princeton,
Marshini was an assistant professor in the College of Information Studies at
the University of Maryland, College Park. Her work on creating
consumer-facing tools for monitoring Internet speeds won a CHI best paper
award; her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the
National Security Agency, Intel, Microsoft, and two Google Faculty Research
Awards.

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