Eric Zeng

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher in CyLab at Carnegie Mellon University, where I am advised by Professor Lujo Bauer. I recently graduated with a PhD in Computer Science & Engineering from the University of Washington, where I was fortunate to be advised by Professor Franzi Roesner, and I was part of the Security and Privacy Lab.

I am interested in improving security and privacy for end users of current and emerging technologies, by conducting user research to surface people' needs and concerns, designing and evaluating systems that make it easier for people to be secure and private, and quantitatively measuring the impacts of security and privacy issues on people.

My research has spanned a broad set of topics and technologies, including investigations of deceptive online advertising, surfacing interpersonal security and privacy issues in smart homes, evaluating the usability of encrypted email for lawyers and journalists, and promoting remediation of HTTPS misconfiguration issues.

Currently, I am interested in a broad set of directions, including:

Investigating material harms and privacy harms of online advertising for vulnerable groups
Building tools to help users understand dark patterns and deceptive advertising
Explainable alerts for security issues in complex IoT systems (e.g. smart homes, industrial control systems)
Studying the spread of scams, anti-security/privacy advice, and mis/disinformation in online communities