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

Team

We're a multi-disciplinary team & always excited to meet new collaborators.

Teach­ing

We strive for inclusive teaching, and aim to involve students in the research experience.

News

17.10.2024

Big Data & So­ci­ety on­line col­loqui­um

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09.10.2024

Ed­ited volume "Ma­ter­i­al­istischer Fem­in­is­mus" pub­lished

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15.08.2024

Pa­per at USENIX Se­cur­ity Sym­posi­um

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09.05.2024

Blog Entry on Epi­stem­ic In­justice in (gen­er­at­ive) AI

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10.10.2023

Award at CSCW!

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23.08.2023

Two re­search pa­pers ac­cep­ted at IEEE Se­cur­ity & Pri­vacy!

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09.08.2023

Dis­tin­guished Pa­per at USENIX Se­cur­ity!

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More news

Pub­lic­a­tions

Digital Security -- A Question of Perspective. A Large-Scale Telephone Survey with Four At-Risk User Groups

F. Herbert, S. Becker, A. Buckmann, M. Kowalewski, J. Hielscher, Y. Acar, M. Dürmuth, M.A. Sasse, Y. Zou, IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy. IEEE, New York, NY, USA (2024).


S3C2 Summit 2024-03: Industry Secure Supply Chain Summit

G. Tystahl, Y. Acar, M. Cukier, W. Enck, C. Kästner, A. Kapravelos, D. Wermke, L.A. Williams, CoRR abs/2405.08762 (2024).


They’re not that hard to mitigate: What Cryptographic Library Developers Think About Timing Attacks

J. Jancar, M. Fourné, D.D.A. Braga, M. Sabt, P. Schwabe, G. Barthe, P.-A. Fouque, Y. Acar, in: R. Rabiser, M. Wimmer, I. Groher, A. Wortmann, B. Wiesmayr (Eds.), Software Engineering 2024, Fachtagung Des GI-Fachbereichs Softwaretechnik, Linz, Austria, February 26 - March 1, 2024, Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V., 2024, pp. 143–144.


Always Contribute Back: A Qualitative Study on Security Challenges of the Open Source Supply Chain

D. Wermke, J.H. Klemmer, N. Wöhler, J. Schmüser, H.S. Ramulu, Y. Acar, S. Fahl, in: R. Rabiser, M. Wimmer, I. Groher, A. Wortmann, B. Wiesmayr (Eds.), Software Engineering 2024, Fachtagung Des GI-Fachbereichs Softwaretechnik, Linz, Austria, February 26 - March 1, 2024, Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V., 2024, pp. 139–140.


Committed to Trust: A Qualitative Study on Security and Trust in Open Source Software Projects

D. Wermke, N. Wöhler, J.H. Klemmer, M. Fourné, Y. Acar, S. Fahl, in: R. Rabiser, M. Wimmer, I. Groher, A. Wortmann, B. Wiesmayr (Eds.), Software Engineering 2024, Fachtagung Des GI-Fachbereichs Softwaretechnik, Linz, Austria, February 26 - March 1, 2024, Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V., 2024, pp. 141–142.


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.


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Prof. Dr. Yasemin Acar

Empirical Software Engineering