Recent News

Dr. Wisniewski was recently featured on an episode of “The Philosophy of Now” podcast, created by ROOTS Media, which centers around conversations with thought leaders and innovators to learn about the journeys in their respective fields and what their philosophy

Congratulations to STIR lab student Zainab Agha on passing her Qualifying Review (QR) for PhD in Computer Science this Fall. The Qualifying Review is an important milestone in the PhD program in which the Graduate Committee evaluates the research and

Congratulations to STIR Lab student Arianna Davis on successfully defending her Honors Undergraduate Thesis! Arianna’s thesis, titled “Co-designing “Teenovate”: An Intergenerational Online Safety Team”, presents the results of a study conducted with teenagers to design a long-term participatory design program

Congratulations to STIR Lab student Denielle Abaquita on successfully defending his Honors Undergraduate Thesis! Denielle’s thesis, titled “Understanding the Challenges Child Welfare Workers Encounter Related to the Online Safety of Foster Youth”, delves into how foster care case managers work

Congratulations to STIR Lab undergraduate student Denielle Abaquita on accepting a Summer 2021 internship at Facebook! This 12 week internship will see Denielle working on projects or features for one of Facebook’s main products. Excited for next year, Denielle had

As the Fall semester begins to wrap up, the STIR Lab must unfortunately say goodbye to one of our best, Dr. Heidi Hartikainen. Heidi will be ending her postdoc with Dr. Wisniewski and will return Finland, to pursue a new

Dr. Wisniewski and other members of the ACM FCA (Future of Computing Academy) recently published the early results of an online survey which asked early-career computing professionals about their experiences with many aspects of remote work, such as productivity, mental

The UCF College of Engineering and Computer Science has established a new Equity, Inclusion and Diversity Task Force, whose mission will be to “identify and implement actionable strategies to transform the culture of CECS into one that celebrates equity, diversity,

Congratulations to our STIR Lab authors on the acceptance of 2 full papers to the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work Workshop on Collective Organizing and Social Responsibility (CSCW 2020)! Citations and Abstracts for the accepted papers are listed below: Badillo-Urquiola,

The STIR Lab recently attended 2 workshops at CSCW 2020, and had position papers accepted to both as part of the conference. Congratulations to the STIR Lab students and Dr. Wisniewski! The paper citations and abstracts are listed below: Agha,

Congratulations to STIR Lab members Heidi Hartikainen, Afsaneh Razi, Ashwaq Alsoubai, and Zainab Agha on attending this year’s Virtual Grace Hopper Celebration. Both Zainab Agha and Afsaneh Razi attended as recipients of a Grace Hopper Scholarship, while Ashwaq Alsoubai and

Congratulations to Dr. Wisniewksi on co-authoring an article recently published in Oxford’s Journal of Cybersecurity. The article, titled “Predicting smartphone location-sharing decisions through self-reflection on past privacy behavior” examines the implications of how and when smartphone users share their location

Congratulations to Dr. Wisniewski and Ph.D. candidate Karla Badillo-Urquiola on co-authoring an article soon to be published in ACM’s Journal of Transactions on Social Computing. The article, titled, “Happiness and Fear: Using Emotions as a Lens to Disentangle How Users

One of the STIR Lab’s recent graduates, Zaina Aljallad, was recently featured on the Computing Research Association’s Undergrad Research Highlights. “Thanks in part to a supportive lab environment, Zaina thrived as a Middle Eastern woman in CS research. “I feel

The STIR Lab welcomes a new semester and two new Ph.D. students! Mamtaj Akter and Ashwaq Soubai have joined the lab and we are excited to have them as both our graduate and undergraduate students begin another Fall of work

Congratulations to Ph.D. candidate Karla Badillo-Urquiola who recently completed her coursework to receive the graduate certificate in Advanced Quantitative Methodologies in Educational and Human Sciences from the Department of Learning Sciences and Education Research at UCF. This certificate provides advanced

Congratulations to Dr. Wisniewski on co-authoring an article in the December 2020 edition of the Computers in Human Behavior Journal, which is dedicated to examining the use of computers and computing technology from a psychological perspective. The article, titled “Examining

Congratulations to Ph.D. student Neeraj Chatlani on being selected to receive a graduate research assistantship for the year 2020-21, from the UCF School of Modelling, Simulation and Training. Neeraj will use this assistantship to continue working with Dr. Wisniewski as

Congratulations to STIR Lab Ph.D. Candidate Karla Badillo-Urquiola on being accepted in the CSCW 2020 Doctoral Consortium! This consortium provides an opportunity for doctoral students to discuss their research in an international forum under the guidance of a panel of

Congratulations to Ph.D. students Zainab Agha and Afsaneh Razi on receiving scholarships to attend the Virtual Grace Hopper Celebration 2020. Committed to supporting the advancement of women in computing, the STIR Lab wishes the best for Zainab and Afsaneh as

The STIR Lab is proud to announce that we are sponsoring a new Senior Design Team at UCF. The team is comprised of Computer Science undergraduate seniors Samuel Beatson, Samuel Armininana Quintana, Jason Dhillon and Blakely Barr. The team will

Congratulations to STIR Lab members Heidi Hartikainen and Ashwaq Soubai on having posters accepted to the Grace Hopper Celebration 2020 General Poster Session! Heidi’s poster, “Online Peer Support for Adolescent Online Sexual Risk” analyzes social media trace data from a

Congratulations to STIR Lab Ph.D. Candidate Kevin Pfiel on successfully defending his dissertation proposal on “Balancing User Experience Between Streamer and Viewer in Mobile Human-to-Human Telepresence”. Kevin did an excellent job presenting his work so far and plan to complete

Congratulations to STIR Lab Ph.D. candidate Afsaneh Razi, who recently began a summer internship with Mozilla Research. Afsaneh will be working in Mozilla’s Voice Consumer Products team, which is part of the Emerging Technologies R&D division. She will be working

Congratulations to Dr. Wisniewski on receiving an ORC 2020 Mentoring Opportunity Program award! This program’s award is intended to pair UCF senior and junior faculty in a mentoring relationship, and will be used to support a faculty research partnership effort

Our CHI 2020 presentation for the paper “Let’s Talk about Sext: How Adolescents Seek Support and Advice about Their Online Sexual Experiences” is now available! This research work provides more insights into how adolescents talk about their online sexual interactions

Congratulations to Dr. Wisniewski and her co-authors on the publishing of an article in the JMIR Journal of Mental Health (JMH). The article, titled “Examining the Self-harm and Suicide Contagion Effects Related to the Portrayal of the Blue Whale Challenge

Congratulations to STIR Lab Ph.D. students, Neeraj Chatlani and Zachary Shea, and Dr. Wisniewski for the acceptance of a position paper into an IDC 2020 workshop! This paper will be part of the workshop, titled “Teaching the Next Generation of