Mary Anne Smart

Research Abstract:

In my work, I identify shortcomings in privacy communication and develop explanations and tools to help people deepen their understanding of privacy. For example, some of my work focuses on developing explanations of a privacy-enhancing technology called differential privacy. Although differential privacy has been widely adopted both by companies like Apple as well as by government agencies such as the US Census Bureau, existing explanations of differential privacy too often lead to misconceptions. I have developed new explanations of differential privacy for data subjects and studied how such explanations affect data-sharing decisions.

Bio:

Mary Anne Smart is a Ph.D. candidate at UC San Diego, advised by Kristen Vaccaro. Previously, she received bachelor's degrees in computer science, mathematics, and Spanish from Indiana University. In her research, Mary Anne identifies shortcomings in privacy communication and develops explanations of privacy-enhancing technologies. She is passionate about teaching and has experience teaching a range of classes as an instructional assistant, as well as experience teaching a class on probabilistic reasoning as the instructor of record.