Selected Awards

  • NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, National Science Foundation (NSF), 2010-2015
  • Best Paper Award, ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2015
  • Best Paper Honorable Mention Award, ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW), 2015
  • Best Paper Nomination, Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), 2015
  • Best Paper Honorable Mention Award, ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2014
  • PNC Technologies Career Development Professorship, 2010 - 2013
  • Best Paper Honorable Mention Award, ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2013
  • Best Paper Nominee, International Conference on Electronic Commerce, 2012
  • Best Paper Award, iConference, Chapel Hill, NC, 2009
  • ACM SIGMIS Best Doctoral Dissertation Award (Runner-Up), 2006
  • Singapore Infocomm Development Authority Gold Medal and Prize for Best Doctoral Dissertation, 2006
  • Singapore Millennium Foundation Postdoctoral Award and Fellowship, 2005 - 2006
  • IBM Ph.D. Fellowship, 2004
  • Best Theme Paper (Runner-Up), International Conferences on Information Systems (ICIS), Seattle, WA, 2003

Research Interests

PAL -- Privacy Assurance Lab: My privacy research interests lie in five themes: privacy conceptualization, user privacy behavior, strategic privacy management, privacy policy, and privacy by design. Her research group seeks to identify the means of having privacy safeguards in place at different levels: individual, group, organization, and system. Toward this end, they have adopted an interdisciplinary research approach by integrating the fields of information systems, organizational studies, human-computer interaction, public policy, and social psychology to develop privacy theories, tools and techniques that help IT professionals, business leaders and policy makers bring system designs, business strategies, and legal requirements into better alignment.

FAR -- Fashion Analytics Research: Understanding fashion trends via a data analytics approach is challenging because different stakeholders may have different interpretations of trends. When data scientists work on trend analysis, they concentrate on technical mechanisms that fashion designers never care about. When fashion designers work on trend analysis, they see fashionable nuances that everyday people ignore. When everyday people talk about fashion trends, they see wearable design elements that fashion designers do not. This line of research is designed to integrate these different perspectives in the fields of data analytics, fashion design, and consumer behavior to better understand and predict fashion trends. Currently the FAR group is exploring the following three topics: Natural Language Analysis for Fashion Feature Extraction, Fashion Trend Analysis, and Social Network Analysis of Fashion Designers.

Research Grants

  • Zhu, S. (PI), and Xu, H. (Co-PI), "Seed Grant: Toward Making Mobile Platforms a Safer Place for Children," College of IST, ($8,632), 2013-2014.
  • Xu, H. (PI), "CAREER: Examining Users' Collective Privacy Management for Online Social Networks," NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, National Science Foundation ($486,606), 2010-2015.
  • Xu, H. (PI), Carroll, J. M. (Co-PI), Rosson, M. B. (Co-PI), and Perkins, D. (Co-PI), "MySpace Generation's Online Safety: Adolescent Attitude and Behavior, Parental Mediation, and Educational Intervention," National Science Foundation ($515,945), 2010-2014.
  • Reddy, M. (PI), and Xu, H. (Co-PI), "Collaborative Privacy Practices: Exploring Privacy in Information Intensive Environments," National Science Foundation ($507,981), 2010-2014.
  • Xu, H. (PI), Bagby, W. J. (Co-PI), and Maitland, C. (Co-PI), "Seed Grant: Regulating Privacy in Wireless Advertising Messaging (WAM): FIPP Compliance by Policy vs. by Design," College of Information Sciences and Technology, Penn State University ($5,725), 2010-2011.
  • Squicciarini, A. (PI), and Xu, H. (Co-PI), "Seed Grant: User's Controllable Privacy in Social Computing," College of Information Sciences and Technology, Penn State University ($5,725), 2010-2011.
  • Xu, H. (PI), Zhu, S. (Co-PI), and Perkins, D. (Co-PI), "Seed Grant: 'MySpace' Generation's Online Safety: Integrating Social, Legal and Technical Perspectives," College of Information Sciences and Technology, Penn State University($8,500), 2009-2010.
  • Xu, H. (PI), Zhu, S. (Co-PI), and Perkins, D. (Co-PI), "Protecting Children's Online Privacy: a Value Sensitive Design Investigation," Children, Youth and Family Consortium, Penn State University ($12,094), 2008-2009.
  • Chu, C. H. (PI), Liu, P. (Co-PI), and Xu, H. (Co-PI), "IA Scholarship and Capacity Building Program," DoD Information Assurance Scholarship Program ($101,734), 2008-2009.
  • Xu, H. (PI), Rosson, M. B. (Co-PI), and Carroll, J. M. (Co-PI), "Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Supplement for the CT-ER Project on Privacy Assurance in Location-Based Services," National Science Foundation ($6,000), 2008-2010.
  • Xu, H. (PI), Rosson, M. B. (Co-PI), and Carroll, J. M. (Co-PI), "CT-ER: Privacy Assurance in Location-Based Services: Integrating Economic Exchange and Social Justice Perspectives," National Science Foundation ($168,777), 2007-2010.
  • Chu, C. H. (PI), Liu, P. (Co-PI), and Xu, H. (Co-PI), "IA Scholarship and Capacity Building Program (Privacy Assurance Lab)," DoD Information Assurance Scholarship Program ($175,576), 2007-2009.