We at the AIR lab are dedicated to broadening participation in computing and having broader impacts with our research. Below we list some of the ways we have been working to achieve these goals. This is a non-exhaustive list.
K-12 Outreach
Often, the AIR lab engages with high school students to show them what exciting career paths exist in STEM. For instance, Marshini regularly participates in UChicago’s Office of Special Programs College Prep annual Kovler Foundation Larry Hawkins Career Conference for High School Students. This program is geared towards all Chicagoland high-school students to help them hear from experts in a variety of professional fields. Marshini has also given talks at a number of high schools or led design workshops including at Princeton Day School and Stuart Country Day School in New Jersey. She has also participated in outreach for the Athena program by WiSTEM.
General Outreach
Outreach is also about broadening participation in computing. The AIR lab works to provide support to those wishing to learn more about STEM at the undergraduate level. For instance, Marshini participated in the Ada Lovelace week at UChicago organized by the Human Integration lab with Ellen Do from the University of Colorado, Boulder. You can view the panel video here.
Our outreach includes creating events that helps others learn about ways of conducting inter-disciplinary research. For instance, together with Helen Nissenbaum (Cornell Tech) and Yan Shvartzshnaider (York University), Marshini has co-organized an annual symposium on contextual integrity. Find out more about this event.
Policy Outreach
The AIR lab does not stop at writing academic papers but makes a concerted effort to influence Internet regulations. For instance, together with collaborators at the Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) at Princeton University, Marshini led a comment to the Federal Trade Commission on their online endorsement guidelines based on our work on AdIntuition and studies of affiliate marketing on YouTube and Pinterest. In the past, Marshini has also contributed to comments on the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, specifically on how educational technologies should be regulated, as well as the California Consumer Protection Act. She has also interacted with the Federal Trade Commission in a workshop organized together with collaborators to discuss how dark patterns should be regulated. AIR lab members Brennan Schaffner and Jake Chanenson have more recently led and contributed to comments on various pieces of consumer protection-related online regulations.