Recent News

STIR Lab Presents at CSCW

STIR Lab Presents at CSCW

STIR lab is going to present four papers at CSCW 2023. The conference will take place at the Hyatt Regency Minneapolis Hotel in Minneapolis, MN USA between October 14 – 18. The four papers the lab is presenting are as follows: “Strike at the Root”: Co-designing Real-Time Social Media Interventions...
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Alghamdi Earns Her Mug

Alghamdi Earns Her Mug

Congratulations to STIR lab PhD Student Leena Alghamdi for earning her lab mug gift! Receiving a mug from the lab is a tradition that the lab does to honor students who successfully published the first study in their dissertation.
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Agha’s Medium Article

Agha’s Medium Article

"We provide teen-centered design-based recommendations based on co-design with teens that break from the status quo of victim protection, emphasizing on risk prevention and teen empowerment, rather than treating teens like victims.," Says Zinab Agha, a fifth-year PhD candidate, as part of a recently published article in Medium, which is...
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STIR Lab Impact Award

STIR Lab Impact Award

Congratulations to Afsaneh Razi, Ashwaq Alsoubai, Seunghyun Kim, Shiza Ali, Gianluca Stringhini, Munmun De Choudhury, and  Pamela Wisniewski for receiving an impact recognition award at the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2023). The team was recognized for their work: "Sliding into My DMs: Detecting Uncomfortable or Unsafe Sexual Risk...
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Caddle Earns His Mug

Caddle Earns His Mug

Congratulations to STIR lab PhD Student Xavier Caddle for earning his lab mug gift! Receiving a mug from the lab is a tradition that the lab does to honor students who successfully published the first study in their dissertation.
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Scientific American Article

Scientific American Article

"Designing features that let users block others and limit the audience for specific posts allow kids and teens to take the reins of their own safety—which is critical," Says Dr. Wisniewski as part of an article featured in Scientific American magazine about how to keep kids and teens safe online....
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Wisniewski News2 Interview

Wisniewski News2 Interview

“Youth are almost desensitized to some of the violent language that’s out there. So, they’ll bully each other to say, ‘go kill yourself’ or, ‘I’m gonna kill myself’ in conversations that are in group conversations that are joking, and so to some extent, I think the social culture around using...
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Wisniewski Autism Institute Talk

Wisniewski Autism Institute Talk

"As parents and educators, it is our job to teach Autistic teens these skills, so that they can become well-formed and independent adults. Autistic teens can disproportionately benefit and be harmed online; therefore, it is important to take evidence-based precautions that protect them from harm without limiting their opportunities to...
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Agha Travel Award

Agha Travel Award

Congratulations to STIR lab PhD candidate Zainab Agha for winning the Gary Marsden Travel Awards to attend the CSCW conference. The Gary Marsden Travel Awards support graduate students in attending ACM SIGCHI conferences.
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Dr.Wisniewski and Agha interview

Dr.Wisniewski and Agha interview

“Now it’s not just trying to protect youth online from bad actors who are real people, it’s also trying to understand the types of interactions they are having with these generative AI and open source chat platforms,” Dr. Wisniewski talks to News 2 regarding how AI is adding new complexity...
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Vanderbilt features Akter

Vanderbilt features Akter

Congratulations to Stirlab Ph.D. Student Mamtaj Akter for getting featured by the Vanderbilt School of Engineering for the work on developing community-based app for managing mobile privacy and security. Check out here to learn more.
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Final Teenovate YAB meeting

Final Teenovate YAB meeting

Congrats to StirLab students Naima and Neeraj for wrapping up the final Teenovate YAB meeting. Find more about Teenovate here.
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Wisniewski talks to News2

Wisniewski talks to News2

“We need to be careful to not use social media as our societal scapegoat,” Dr. Wisniewski talks to News2 in lieu of Tennesse school district suing big tech companies like Snapchat and TikTok. Dr. Wisniewski said these platforms also allow marginalized groups like LGBTQ teens and those on the autism spectrum...
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Encode Justice Workshop

Encode Justice Workshop

Congratulations Dr. Wisniewski for presenting at the workshop hosted by Encode Justice Florida and Stand for Freedom to speak to researchers and leaders on why include technology in racial justice and the steps one can take. Watch the full video here.
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Agha Attends IDC

Agha Attends IDC

Congrats to STIR Lab student Zainab Agha for getting accepted into the doctoral consortium at the ACM Interaction Design for Children conference, held in Chicago from June 19-23rd. https://idc.acm.org/2023/ The doctoral consortium is a closed event where accepted Ph.D. students get an opportunity to discuss first results, future plans, stumbling...
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Qadir leads seminar at LIVE

Qadir leads seminar at LIVE

Congratulations Ph.D. Student Sarvech Qadir on conducting a seminar on "Mastering Statistical Analysis and Visualization using JASP" at Vanderbilt LIVE Summer Research Program. In this session, participants learned how to use JASP, a free and open-source statistical software program that can be used to import data from a variety of...
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Agha Awarded LIVE Microgrant

Agha Awarded LIVE Microgrant

Congrats to STIR student Zainab Agha and Dr. Wisniewski on being awarded the LIVE Microgrant of $2000 at Vanderbilt for the Social Media Simulation project! LIVE microgrants are designed to promote faculty and student research on consequential learning technology to help build the LIVE community and support the development of...
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CRA Leadership Academy

CRA Leadership Academy

Congratulations to Dr. Wisniewski for being selected to attend the inaugural CRA Leadership Academy for Faculty (https://cra.org/cra-leadership-academy-for-faculty/). The CRA Leadership Academy cultivates future leaders in computing and computing research through a one-day in-person workshop and follow-up virtual meetings among the Leadership Academy cohort.  Participants will learn new skills and perspectives on leadership,...
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