Lorrie Cranor, a professor in the Institute for Software Research and the Department of Engineering and Public Policy, has received the Social Impact Award from the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Computer Human Interaction (SIGCHI). Cranor's former societal computing Ph.D. student Blase Ur won the group's Outstanding Dissertation Award.

"Lorrie's work has had a huge impact on the ability of nontechnical users to protect their security and privacy through her user-centered approach to security and privacy research, and development of numerous tools and technologies," said Ur, who prepared Cranor’s nomination and is now an assistant professor at the University of Chicago.

The Social Impact Award is given to mid- or senior-level individuals who promote the application of human-computer interaction research to pressing social needs. The award includes a $5,000 honorarium, the opportunity to give a talk about the awarded work at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2018), and lifetime invitations to the annual SIGCHI awards banquet.

Ur and three other former students from Cranor's CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Lab —Michelle Mazurek, Florian Schaub and Yang Wang — supported her nomination.

"All four of us are currently assistant professors, spread out across the United States," said Ur, who received his doctorate in 2016. "In addition to this impact on end users, the four of us who jointly nominated her have also benefitted greatly from her mentorship."

Ur is one of two Ph.D. recipients to receive SIGCHI's inaugural Outstanding Dissertation Award, which recognizes the most outstanding research contributions from recently graduated Ph.D. students within the human-computer interaction community.

A full summary of this year's SIGCHI award recipients can be found on the organization's website.