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.