Call for Nominations: 2023 John Karat Usable Privacy and Security Student Research Award

In honor of John Karat's contributions to the usable privacy and security community and his dedication to mentoring students, SOUPS has instituted the John Karat Usable Privacy and Security Student Research Award.

The Karat Student Award will be presented to a graduate student based on:

  • Their research in usable privacy and security
  • Their efforts to mentor others
  • Their community service for usable privacy and security (e.g., volunteer activities in conferences)

The winner of the award will be announced at the SOUPS conference.

To be eligible, the student must have graduated no earlier than 18 months prior to the conference. Thus for the 2023 award, current graduate students and those who have graduated no earlier than January 2022 are eligible.

The deadline for nominations is Thursday, May 25, 2023.

Nominees will be notified of the outcome by the end of July.

Nominations should include:

  • The student's best three usable privacy and security papers. These papers must have been submitted for publication while the nominee was a student. The papers may have been published (or accepted for publication) in any peer-reviewed venue.
  • A CV covering the student's research and activities in the area of usable privacy and security while they were a student. It should include matriculation date and graduation date, if that has already occurred.
  • A statement from the student (up to one page) describing their contributions to usable privacy and security research, to mentoring, and to usable privacy and security community service. If desired, bibliographic references may be included on a second page.
  • Three letters of support. The letters of support should include descriptions of the student's specific contributions to the papers in the nomination package, as well as comments on the student's mentoring and service.

Nomination packages, in the form of a single PDF, should be sent to karat_award@usenix.org.

Karat Award Chair

Heather Lipford, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Karat Award Committee

Tousif Ahmed, Google

Elissa Redmiles, Max Planck Institute for Software Systems

Jose Such, King's College London

Leah Zhang-Kennedy, University of Waterloo

Past Award Winners

2022: Yixin Zou, University of Michigan

2021: Alena Naiakshina, University of Bonn

2020: Daniel Votipka, University of Maryland

2019: Tousif Ahmed, Indiana University

2018: Yasemin Acar, Leibniz University Hannover and Elissa Redmiles, University of Maryland

2017: Sascha Fahl, CISPA and Scott Ruoti, Brigham Young University

2016: Blase Ur, Carnegie Mellon University