Assistant Professor of Instruction
Northwestern University

Office: Mudd 3510
Email: srutib AT northwestern DOT edu
Research interests: Security, privacy, social networks, HCI, CS education

Short Bio

I am an Assistant Professor of Instruction in Computer Science at Northwestern University. I received my PhD from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in 2021, where I was advised by Dr. Lujo Bauer and was a member of CyLab. I received a BS in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2014 where I was advised in my research by Dr. Chris Kanich. I had a short stint as a Software Development Engineer (SDE) at Amazon for a year from 2014-2015.

Teaching

COMP_SCI 211: Fundamentals of Computer Programming II [f22, s22]
COMP_SCI 214: Data Structures and Algorithms [s22]
COMP_SCI 396/496: Security and Privacy Education [w23]
COMP_SCI 397/497: Data Privacy [w23, f22, w22]

Publications

"Adulthood is trying each of the same six passwords that you use for everything": The scarcity and ambiguity of security advice on social media
Sruti Bhagavatula, Lujo Bauer, Apu Kapadia
ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work And Social Computing (CSCW 2022). [PDF]

(How) Do people change their passwords after a breach?
Sruti Bhagavatula, Lujo Bauer, Apu Kapadia
USENIX ;login: (December 2021). [article]

Measuring and increasing the reach of security information through online media
Sruti Bhagavatula
PhD dissertation (September 2021). [PDF]

What breach? Measuring online awareness of security incidents by studying real-world browsing behavior
Sruti Bhagavatula, Lujo Bauer, Apu Kapadia
European Symposium on Usable Security (EuroUSEC 2021). [PDF, Extended abstract (ConPro 2021) , arXiv (full version)]

"I would have to evaluate their objections": Privacy tensions between smart home device owners and incidental users
Camille Cobb, Sruti Bhagavatula, Kalil Anderson Garrett, Alison Hoffman, Varun Rao, Lujo Bauer
Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETS 2021). [PDF]

(How) Do people change their passwords after a breach?
Sruti Bhagavatula, Lujo Bauer, Apu Kapadia
IEEE Workshop on Technology and Consumer Protection (ConPro 2020). [PDF, Talk video, arXiv]

By the user, for the user: A user-centric approach to quantifying the privacy of websites
Matius Chairani*, Mathieu Chevalley*, Abderrahmane Lazraq*, Sruti Bhagavatula
arXiv preprint 1911.05798 (November 2019). [preprint]
* Authors contributed equally

A general framework for adversarial examples with objectives
Mahmood Sharif, Sruti Bhagavatula, Lujo Bauer, Michael Reiter
ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security (TOPS 2019). [PDF]

Comparing hypothetical and realistic privacy valuations
Joshua Tan, Mahmood Sharif, Sruti Bhagavatula, Matthias Beckerle, Michelle Mazurek, Lujo Bauer
ACM Workshop on Privacy in the Electronic Society (WPES 2018). [PDF]

Privacy expectations and preferences in an IoT world
Pardis Emami-Naeini, Sruti Bhagavatula, Hana Habib, Martin Degeling, Lujo Bauer, Lorrie Cranor, Norman Sadeh
Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2017). [PDF]

Towards privacy-aware smart buildings: Capturing, communicating, and enforcing privacy policies and preferences
Primal Pappachan, Martin Degeling, Roberto Yus, Anupam Das, Sruti Bhagavatula, William Melicher, Pardis Emami Naeini, Shikun Zhang, Lujo Bauer, Alfred Kobsa, Sharad Mehrotra, Norman Sadeh, Nalini Venkatasubramanian
International Workshop on the Internet of Things Computing and Applications (IoTCA 2017). [PDF]

Accessorize to a crime: Real and stealthy attacks on state-of-the-art face recognition
Mahmood Sharif, Sruti Bhagavatula, Lujo Bauer, Michael K. Reiter
ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS 2016). [PDF]

Leveraging machine learning to improve unwanted resource filtering
Sruti Bhagavatula, Christopher Dunn, Chris Kanich, Minaxi Gupta, Brian Ziebart
ACM Workshop on Artificial Intelligence and Security (AISec 2014). [PDF] [Slides]

Students

I am always interested in chatting with motivated students interested in security and privacy and relevant research as well as CS education; feel free to get in touch if this applies to you! If you are interested in working with me on research, please check this spreadsheet first to see if I am taking on new students.

I have/had the pleasure of working with the following students on research:

Past teaching

[CMU] 15-122 (Summer II 2020): Principles of Imperative Computation. Instructor

[CMU] 15-330/18-330 (Spring 2020): Introduction to Computer Security. Teaching assistant

[CMU] 18-734/17-731 (Fall 2019): Foundations of Privacy. Head teaching assistant

[CMU] 17-331/17-631 (Fall 2018): Information Security, Privacy, and Policy. Head teaching assistant

Service

Reviewer for CHI 2023
PC member for SIGCSE Computing Education Research 2022
External reviewer for PoPETS 2022
Advisory board member for CMU Teaching & Learning Summit 2021
External reviewer for PoPETS 2021
PC member for SIGCSE Experience Reports and Tools 2021
CMU Graduate Student Teaching Award committee member 2020
Panelist and volunteer for the UIC eCSR workshops (2019, 2020)
External reviewer for PoPETS 2019
External reviewer for IEEE European Symposium on Security & Privacy 2019
External reviewer for USENIX Security Symposium 2017
External reviewer for IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy 2017

Awards

Selected as a Rising Star in EECS 2020
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship 2016 - Honorable Mention
Selected for CRA-W Graduate Cohort Workshop 2016
NSF 4-year STEM Scholarship by the UIC Department of Computer Science

Publications for fun

Putting the Ceremony in "Authentication Ceremony"
Camille Cobb, Sruti Bhagavatula
ACH SIGBOVIK 2020. [PDF (pages 106-112)]

Personal

I have lived in several cities including Bengaluru, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Seattle but spent much of my formative years in India.

In my free time, I love to sing (even when I'm not free), act (I've even been in a few musicals during grad school), play the piano, bike, practice yoga, read novels, eat desserts, and watch TV/movies/anime.

I read a lot of fiction and have been trying to keep my Goodreads shelf updated here.