Dr. Leah Zhang-Kennedy is an Associate Professor in interaction design and user experience research at the Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business, University of À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ. Her research focuses on understanding and improving privacy experiences and practices for various user segments using multidisciplinary methods in HCI and user experience design.
She is a cross-appointed faculty in the Department of Systems Design EngineeringÌý²¹²Ô»å at the U of W and an Adjunct Research Professor in the at Carleton University. She is a faculty member of the À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ Games Institute and Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute, and a member of . She is also an adjunct research professor in the School of Computer Science at Carleton University and co-supervises graduate students in the program.
Dr. Leah Zhang-Kennedy research studies the interactions of human factors and computing systems in the inherently interdisciplinary domains of human-centric cybersecurity and privacy, drawing on the fields of human-computer interaction (HCI), usable privacy and security (UPS), and user experience (UX) research. Her work is premised on the belief that computer science-based approaches, while necessary, are insufficient to tackle cybersecurity challenges alone. To understand the varied aspects of cybersecurity and privacy, scholarly contributions from a range of disciplines are necessary. With her research team, she studies these intersections via multiple methods, including auto-ethnography, interviews, surveys, experiments, and system implementation, among others.Â
From teaching students to creating novel design solutions to leading events, Dr. Zhang-Kennedy's work is featured in À¶Ý®ÊÓƵ's 2021 Global Impact Report, Stratford School's 2022 Think Privacy news page, and the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute's CPI spotlight in 2024.