Serge Egelman is Research Director of the Usable Security & Privacy Group at the International Computer Science Institute and leads the Berkeley Laboratory for Usable and Experimental Security (BLUES) within the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) at the University of California, Berkeley. Serge’s research focuses on the intersection of privacy, computer security, and human behavior, with the specific aim of better understanding how people make decisions surrounding their privacy and security, and then creating data-driven improvements to systems and interfaces.

This has included human subjects research on social networking privacy, access controls, authentication mechanisms, web browser security warnings, and privacy-enhancing technologies. His work has received multiple best paper awards, including the 2012 Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS) Distinguished Paper Award for his work on smartphone application permissions, and the 2012 Information Systems Research Best Published Paper Award for his work on consumers’ willingness to pay for online privacy. Based on this expertise, he routinely is asked to consult as an expert witness on public interest matters relating to consumer privacy and online security. He received his PhD from Carnegie Mellon University and prior to that was an undergraduate at the University of Virginia.  He has also performed research at NIST, Brown University, Microsoft Research, and Xerox PARC.