Events

Distinguished Lecturer CSE: Community-engaged Approaches to Digital Safety for Survivors of Interpersonal Abuse

Speaker: Nicki Dell, Cornell Tech

Location: 370 Jay Street, Room 1201
Videoconference link: https://nyu.zoom.us/j/98460680778

Date: Tuesday, February 17, 2026

I work to investigate, build, and deploy sociotechnical systems that make our technology-mediated world safer and more equitable. In this talk, I'll discuss the decade I have spent working to improve digital safety for survivors of interpersonal abuse. I detail the multifaceted and damaging ways in which abusers exploit technology to harass, impersonate, threaten, monitor, intimidate, and otherwise harm survivors via spyware, social media, tracking tools, account compromise, and more. To make progress, I engage deeply with survivors and the organizations that serve them to (1) design and deliver new evidence-based clinical interventions that directly assist survivors experiencing technology-facilitated abuse, (2) advocate for laws and policies that better protect survivors, and (3) conduct human-centered research into how to (re)design technologies to resist abuse and improve digital safety for everyone.

Bio:
Nicki Dell is an Associate Professor at Cornell Tech. Her research focuses on understanding how computing technologies can facilitate harm or inequity and building systems, frameworks, and interventions that make our technology-mediated world safer and more equitable for everyone. She carries out her research in sustained partnership with affected communities to deepen her understanding of the challenges they face and to devise new approaches that respond to both technological and social factors at play. Nicki’s work is situated primarily in human-computer interaction (HCI), with multidisciplinary collaborations in computer security & privacy, health and medicine, information & communication technologies and development, and more. At Cornell Tech, Nicki co-founded and co-directs the Clinic to End Tech Abuse, co-leads Cornell's Initiative on Home Care Work, and was the 2023 Siegel Faculty Impact Fellow. Nicki’s work has been recognized via a MacArthur Fellowship (2024), SIGCHI Societal Impact Award (2023), Advocate of New York City Award (2019), and NSF CAREER Award (2018), among other awards.