Sepideh Ghanavati
Associate Professor
School Computing and Information Science
University of Maine
Orono, ME, USA
Phone: +1 (207) 581-3218
Email: sepideh[dot]ghanavati[at]maine.edu
About
I am an associate professor in Computer Science at the School of Computing and Information Science (SCIS) at the University of Maine and the director of the Privacy Engineering - Regulatory Compliance Lab (PERC_Lab). I am also the faculty affiliate of the Canadian-American Center and a researcher at the University of Maine Artificial Intelligence Initiative (UMaine AI) center. I received 2023 NSF CAREER Award.
My research interests are in the areas of information privacy and security, privacy by design, software engineering, and programming comprehension. I apply my research to several applications such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Android, and iOS applications. The interdisciplinary nature of this research requires me to employ a variety of research methods, including requirements and software engineering, natural language processing, machine learning, deep learning, and empirical human studies.
I am the recipient of the Google Faculty Research Award in 2018 and Google’s Privacy-related Faculty Award in 2021.
For more more about me, check out my Academic CV or About Me page.
Prospective students interested to join PERC_Lab, please check here as well as read through Norms and Policy document. Note that interest in privacy-related topics is a key. Currently, I am not actively recruiting new students. However, I will always look for exceptional candidates that have a research background that matches my research interests.
Find my PGP public key here.
Publication Index
[Google Scholar] [DBLP] [IEEE XPlore]
Research Interests
- Mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) Privacy and Security
- Usable Privacy
- Natural Language Understanding
- Programming Comprehension (Code Summarization/Generation)
- Privacy by Design
- Regulatory Compliance Software Engineering
- Requirements Engineering
Recent News
06/28/2024
Our paper “Requirements Satisfiability with In-Context Learning” won RE24 Challenge Award for Research Track.
06/25-26/2024
My collaborators and I presented three papers at RE'24 Conference in Reykjavik, Iceland.
06/04/2024
Vijayanta Jain and Sepideh Ghanavati presented our work "Identifying Privacy Behaviors in Android Application Source Code" at Google ASAP Research Seminar.
05/14/2024
Our paper "Evaluating Privacy Perceptions, Experience, and Behavior of Software Development Teams" has been accepted at the SOUPS'2024.
05/04/2024
Congratulations to Kenzie Young, Sean Radel, Zack Delile, Theo Brucker, Wilder Baldwin and Joe Godinez for graduating with BSc. at UMaine.
05/03/2024
Congratulations to Adam Green for graduating with MSc. at UMaine.
04/30/2024
Our paper "Patterns of Inquiry in a Community Forum for Legal Compliance with Privacy Law" has been accepted at the ESPRE'2024 workshop.
04/30/2024
Our paper "Toward Regulatory Compliance: A few-shot Learning Approach to Extract Processing Activities" has been accepted at the ESPRE'2024 workshop.
04/08/2024
Dr. Ghanavati has promoted to the rank of associate professor and received tenure.
03/28/2024
Congratulations to Maxwell Prybylo for receiving MSGC Graduate Summer Fellowships for "Perception vs. Reality: Unveiling the Privacy Knowledge Gap Among Software Developers" project.
03/21/2024
Our paper "Requirements Satisfiability with In-Context Learning" has been accepted at the RE'2024 conference.
12/03-09/2023
Vijayanta Jain attended FSE for showcasing our Demonstration Paper.
11/22/2023
Dr. Ghanavati gave a guest lecture in the Information Privacy Law at UMaine School of Law.
11/20/2023
Dr. Ghanavati gave an invited talk at York University in Toronto, Canada.
11/16-17/2023
Dr. Ghanavati attended Leadership in Science Policy Institute (LiSPI) in Washington DC.