Career Profile

I am an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Software and Societal Systems Department (S3D) and the Associate Director of Carnegie Mellon University's Masters in Privacy Engineering program. Previously, I was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Collaboratory Against Hate working with Geoff Kaufman. I completed my PhD in Societal Computing at Carnegie Mellon University where I was advised by Lorrie Faith Cranor. My research studies people's behaviors and preferences when interacting with technology, focusing on issues that have societal impact such as security and privacy.

Prior to my PhD, I completed a Bachelors in Computer Science and Electrical & Computer Engineering from Cornell University and a Masters in Information Technology - Information Security from Carnegie Mellon University. I also worked as a software engineer for the U.S. Department of Defense.

Selected Publications

Hana Habib, Sarah Pearman, Ellie Young, Lorrie Faith Cranor. "Identifying User Needs for Advertising Controls on Facebook." In Proceedings of the Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work And Social Computing (CSCW). 2022.
Hana Habib, Yixin Zou, Yaxing Yao, Alessandro Acquisti, Lorrie Faith Cranor, Joel Reidenberg, Norman Sadeh, and Florian Schaub. “Toggles, Dollar Signs, and Triangles: How to (In)Effectively Convey Privacy Choices with Icons and Link Texts.” In Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI). 2021. [Icon recommendation adopted into the Fourth Set of Modifications to the CCPA]
Hana Habib, Neil Shah, and Rajan Vaish. "Impact of Contextual Factors on Snapchat Public Sharing." In Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI). 2019. [Best Paper Honorable Mention award]

Experiences

Assistant Teaching Professor

July 2024-Present
Sofftware and Societal Systems Department, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh

Associate Director and Special Faculty Instructor

Dec 2022-Present
Privacy Engineering Master's Program, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh

I teach and facilitate core courses in the MSIT-Privacy Engineering program, including Engineering Privacy in Software, Special Topics in Privacy, and Privacy-by-Design Workshop.

Postdoctoral Researcher

Jan 2022 - Dec 2022
The Collaboratory Against Hate, Pittsburgh

I am conducting a user study to explore the effectiveness of different design interventions in preventing individuals who encounter hateful messaging online from acquiring and propagating such views. This research implements approaches related to social identity and normative behavior and extends prior work examining psychological interventions for promoting civil discourse online.

Graduate Research Assistant

Aug 2016 - Sept 2021
CMU CyLab Usable Privacy & Security Lab, Pittsburgh

I developed user study protocols to investigate research questions in the space of usable privacy and security. I utilized quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze data collected from these user studies. My thesis provides a systemic approach for evaluating the usability of privacy choice interfaces.

I also served as a Teaching Assistant for Usable Privacy and Security (Spring 2019), a research methods focused graduate level course, and Privacy Policy, Law, and Technology (Fall 2016), a cross-discipline graduate level course.

Research Intern

May 2018 - Aug 2018
Snap Inc, Los Angeles

During my internship, I designed and conducted a user study to better understand the role of context on public sharing decisions of Snapchat users, and communicated the findings to stakeholders within the company to inform future product development. I also collaborated with Marketing, Privacy Engineering, and Legal teams to help establish organizational processes for conducting HCI research.

Privacy Engineering Intern

May 2015 - Aug 2015
Apple Inc, Cupertino

At Apple, I collaborated with teams cross-functionally to ensure that feature designs for new and existing Apple products were privacy-protective for customers. I also developed tools to automate recurring Privacy Engineering tasks and analyzed reported data to better understand customer privacy needs.

Graduate Research Assistant

Jan 2015 - Dec 2015
CMU CyLab Usable Privacy & Security Lab, Pittsburgh

As a research assistant, I facilitated a diary and interview study of online data sharing practices in order to better understand user requirements for applications and services. My contributions included coordinating and conducting participant interviews, and analyzing survey data through interview coding.

I also helped design a user study protocol to investigate effective notification mediums for Internet of Things devices. As part of this study, I modified a PhoneGap Android application to send push notifications containing variations of a privacy notice for a Fitbit device.

Product Owner/Software Engineer

June 2013 - July 2016
Department of Defense, Maryland

While at the DoD, I led efforts to implement capabilities to generate different cryptographic products by a Key Management Infrastructure (KMI). I also updated system components to integrate new KMI capabilities and virtualized them for use in the development environment.

Scholarships & Awards

Facebook Research Award - Awarded $50,000 to pursue a project exploring how to improve the user experience for controlling targeted advertising on Facebook.

Rising Stars Participant - Selected to participate in the 2019 Rising Stars Workshop, an academic career workshop for women in EECS.

CyLab Presidential Fellowship (2017/2018 and 2019/2020) - A tuition scholarship awarded to high-achieving exemplary CyLab graduate students researching topics in security and privacy.

Privacy Scholars Fellowship Program Participant - Hosted by the Program on Economics & Privacy (PEP) at George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School to support research on the economics of privacy and data security.

Executive Women's Forum Fellowship - A full-tuition scholarship awarded to an incoming female student studying information security at the Information Networking Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

Stokes Educational Scholarship Program - A DoD sponsored scholarship awarded to high-school seniors who plan to study computer science or computer/electrical engineering.

Service

European Symposium on Usable Security (EuroUSEC) Program Committee (2023)
Workshop on Usable Security and Privacy (USEC) Program Committee (2023)
Who Are You!? Adventures in Authentication (WAY) Program Committee (2019)
PhD Women@SCS Board (2019)
Graduate Student Assembly (2019)
OurCS Conference Committee (2019)
OurCS Facilitator (2017, 2019)
INI Alumni Leadership Council (2018-2021)