[Announcements] Post-Doc and Project Scientist Openings - School of Computer Science - Carnegie Mellon University

[Norman Sadeh-Koniecpol]

Post-Doc and Project Scientist Openings – Research on Personalized Privacy Assistant for the Internet of Things

School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University

November 2015

The School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University has two openings (one project scientist position and one post-doc position)  to work on a high-profile, interdisciplinary project aimed at developing Personalized Privacy Assistants for the Internet of Things.  Both positions are research positions that require a PhD. The project scientist position is a more senior position that also includes some managerial responsibilities. Both positions report directly to the lead Principal Investigator of the project.

The Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data are making it impractical for people to keep up with the many different ways in which their data can potentially be collected and processed. What is needed is a new, more scalable paradigm that empowers users to regain appropriate control over their data.  Personalized privacy assistants are intelligent agents capable of learning the privacy preferences of their users over time, semi-automatically configuring many settings, and making many privacy decisions on their behalf. Through targeted interactions, privacy assistants will help their users better appreciate the ramifications associated with the processing of their data, and empower them to control such processing in an intuitive and effective manner. This includes: (1) selectively alerting users about practices they are not expecting and may not feel comfortable with, (2) confirming with users privacy settings the assistants are not sure how to configure, (3) refining models of their user’s preferences over time, and (4)  occasionally nudging users to carefully (re)consider the implications of some of their privacy decisions. Ultimately, these assistants will learn our preferences and help us more effectively manage our privacy settings across a wide range of devices and environments without the need for frequent interruptions.

This project involves five faculty members at Carnegie Mellon University (Prof. Norman Sadeh, Alessandro Acquisti, Lujo Bauer, Lorrie Cranor and Anupam Datta) along with a number of graduate and undergraduate students and several other post-docs. As part of this research, we are building on promising results we have obtained developing personalized privacy assistants for mobile apps. This is a multi-disciplinary effort that combines privacy, human computer interaction, machine learning, artificial intelligence and behavioral science. Work in the project will combine human subject experiments and software development with deployment and piloting of our technology in actual Internet of Things environments.

Both openings are for individuals who are interested in and capable of contributing to research in one or more of the following areas: (1) Modeling user privacy preferences, (2) Dialogs with users to selectively communicate important privacy policy considerations and elicit preferences and decisions from users, (3) machine learning techniques to incrementally refine user models, (4) develop and refine machine readable privacy policy languages to capture relevant data collection practices and privacy preferences, (5) protocols to communicate privacy policies and configure privacy settings in IoT and mobile environments, (6) design, development and evaluation of mobile clients implementing different configurations of personalized privacy assistants.


Successful candidates are expected to have a PhD in computer science or some equally relevant discipline -  or have some equivalent research experience. They are expected to be capable of working under limited supervision and should have strong organizational and communication skills. They are also expected to have some development skills and have experience collaborating with others in the context of large-scale research and software projects. Both openings include opportunities to directly supervise both undergraduate and graduate students working on the project. Actual work is expected to involve a mix of conceptual design, experimentation, software development, and empirical evaluations (including human subject experiments). The project scientist position also involves some managerial responsibilities to support the lead Principal Investigator coordinate the project and interact with the project sponsors. The successful candidates are expected to publish papers in top-tier conferences and journals along with other faculty and students.

Initial appointments will be for one or two years with option of renewal subject to performance and availability of funding. These positions are available immediately. Preference will be given to candidates who can start by March 2016. Carnegie Mellon offers competitive salaries and benefits. To be considered for one or both positions, candidates should forward their resume along with the names of 3 references to:

Ms. Linda Francona
ISR – School of Computer Science
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3891 - USA
Tel: +1-412-268-9934
Email: laf20 at cs.cmu.edu<mailto:laf20 at cs.cmu.edu>

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Prof. Norman M. Sadeh – www.normsadeh.org
ISR -  School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
5000 Forbes Avenue -- Pittsburgh, PA 15213

Lab Manager: Ms. Linda Moreci – laf20 at cs.cmu.edu<mailto:laf20 at cs.cmu.edu> - Tel: 412-268-9934
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