Empirical Software Engineering
Prof. Dr. Yasemin Acar
We work towards empowering society to protect people from digital harms.
We strive to improve security, privacy, equity, and accessibility through our research, teaching, and beyond.
We address social challenges that may be exacerbated by technology, and leverage empirical research methods with end users and non-users of technology, developers, administrators, educators and other decision makers to make it easier to safely develop and use technology devoid of social harm.
We use qualitative and quantitative human computer interaction methods (surveys, interviews, focus groups), large scale measurements, and mixed-methods approaches.
Our goal and approaches are inclusive, and we love collaborating with cryptographers, open source developers, corporate software developers, system administrators, users and non-users of software.
Research
We use qualitative and quantitative human computer interaction methods (surveys, interviews, focus groups), large scale measurements, and mixed-methods approaches.
Our goal and approaches are inclusive, and we love collaborating with cryptographers, open source developers, corporate software developers, system administrators, users and non-users of software.
About us
News
Publications
From Thrift Stores to Digital Storefronts: Users’ Perspectives on Privacy and Security of Online Second-Hand Shopping in Germany
D. Zarkalam, A.L. Rotthaler, L. Simko, Y. Acar, in: Twenty-Second Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2026), 2026, pp. 141–160.
Poster: Computer Security Researchers' Experiences with Vulnerability Disclosures
H. Sri Ramulu, A.L. Rotthaler, J. Rossel, R. Gonzalez Rodriguez, D. Wermke, S. Fahl, T. Kohno, J. Somorovsky, Y. Acar, in: Proceedings of the 2025 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security, ACM, 2025.
"It’s Time. Time for Digital Security.": An End User Study on Actionable Security and Privacy Advice
A.L. Rotthaler, H. Sri Ramulu, L. Simko, S. Fahl, Y. Acar, in: M. Blanton, W. Enck, C. Nita-Rotaru (Eds.), IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, SP 2025, San Francisco, CA, USA, May 12-15, 2025, IEEE, 2025, pp. 2228–2245.
S3C2 SICP Summit 2025-06: Vulnerability Response Summit
A.L. Rotthaler, S. Oberthür, J. Somorovsky, K. Thommes, S.T.-N. Trang, Y. Acar, M. Cukier, W. Enck, A. Kapravelos, C. Kästner, ArXiv Preprint ArXiv:2512.02600 (2025).
Analyzing Security and Privacy Advice During the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine on Twitter
J. Schmüser, H.S. Ramulu, N. Wöhler, C. Stransky, F. Bensmann, D. Dimitrov, S. Schellhammer, D. Wermke, S. Dietze, Y. Acar, S. Fahl, in: F. ’Floyd’ Mueller, P. Kyburz, J.R. Williamson, C. Sas, M.L. Wilson, P.O.T. Dugas, I. Shklovski (Eds.), Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2024, Honolulu, HI, USA, May 11-16, 2024, ACM, 2024, p. 574:1–574:16.
Decomposing and Measuring Trust in Open-Source Software Supply Chains
L. Boughton, C. Miller, Y. Acar, D. Wermke, C. Kästner, in: Proceedings of the 2024 {ACM/IEEE} 44th International Conference on Software Engineering: New Ideas and Emerging Results, NIER@ICSE 2024, Lisbon, Portugal, April 14-20, 2024, ACM, 2024, pp. 57–61.
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