Welcome! I am a postdoctoral associate in computer science at Georgetown University, where I’m working with Professor Elissa Redmiles and Professor Allison McDonald (Boston University). Previously, I was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, hosted by Professor Salil Vadhan and co-hosted by Professor Martin Wattenberg.

My research is at the intersection of privacy & security and human-computer interaction, with a recent focus on AI security & safety. Most recently, I developed a novel strategy for system designers to elicit data donors’ security preferences for participatory AI and investigated downstream impacts of showing users how AI chatbots model their demographics. My work draws on principles in risk communication, visualization, and differential privacy. I use a mixed-methods approach, including tool building & evaluation, quantitative user experiments, and interview studies to advance security & privacy.

I received a joint PhD in computer science and communication from Northwestern University, where I was advised by Professor Jessica Hullman. During my PhD, I held visiting positions at Columbia University, Simons Institute, UC Berkeley, and Microsoft Research in FATE and SMC. During the 2024-25 academic year, I was a fellow at the Center for Research on Computation and Society (CRCS). I am an MIT EECS Rising Star and UCSD Data Science Rising Star.

I can be reached at priyanka.nanayakkara [at] georgetown.edu.

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