Haojian Jin

haojian@ucsd.edu

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[Dissertation: modular privacy flows]

I am taking on new PhD students and interns. See more details here.

I'm an Assistant Professor in Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute (HDSI) and Department of Computer Science and Engineering (affiliate) at UC San Diego.

My main interest is bridging the gap between complex computing systems and human cognitive capacity using Permissions and Manifests. Computing systems are increasingly complex, making it challenging for users and developers to comprehend and trust them. For example, users have to blindly consent to the text in the cookie consent banner since they do not have time to read all the text. It takes developers significant efforts to understand the security and privacy implications of all the third-party open- source libraries they want to import. We have only limited ways to regulate the behaviors of large language models.

Our lab takes an interdisciplinary approach to address this challenge, drawing on ideas and methods from HCI, security & privacy, AI, software engineering, mobile computing, and programming language.



In particular, our approach includes four key components:

  • Assisting developers in implementing systems as intended.
  • Enforcing system behaviors according to designers' specifications.
  • Summarizing system behaviors in a concise format, typically a single page, to aid users in understanding them.
  • Enabling users to interact meaningfully with complex systems with reasonable effort.

Activities