Ada Lerner
(she/her/hers or they/them/theirs)
Assistant Professor
Research interests
- Human–computer interaction
- Security and privacy
Education
- PhD in Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington
- MS in Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington
- BA in Computer Science, Amherst College
Biography
Ada Lerner is an assistant professor at the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University, based in Boston.
Lerner researches human–computer interaction and security and privacy, and is a member of Northeastern's Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute. She has published at the Symposium on Usable Privacy, ACM CHI, ACM CCS, and IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy. Prior to joining Northeastern, she worked as an assistant professor at Wellesley College.
Outside of work, Lerner enjoys games of all kinds, including board games, card games, puzzles, crosswords.
Recent publications
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“A Source of Hope Online”: Membership Curation by Staff to Protect Guarded Cliques Limits Access to Resources for Marginalized Communities on Discord CSCW002
Citation: Erika Melder, Emma Vonbuelow, Ada Lerner, Michael A. DeVito. (2026). "A Source of Hope Online": Membership Curation by Staff to Protect Guarded Cliques Limits Access to Resources for Marginalized Communities on Discord CSCW002 Proc. ACM Hum. Comput. Interact., 10, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1145/3788038 -
“How would I know what I would want from or with them?’: Supporting A-Spec Approaches to Developing Relationships Through Online Platforms
Citation: Kelly Wang, Ashlee Milton, Leah Namisa Rosenbloom, Erika Melder, Ada Lerner, Michael Ann DeVito. (2026). "How would I know what I would want from or with them?': Supporting A-Spec Approaches to Developing Relationships Through Online Platforms CHI, 907:1-907:20. https://doi.org/10.1145/3772318.3791253 -
“As Someone Who is Disabled, I am so thankful for Sex Work”: Alternative Approaches to Access Among Disabled Sex-Workers
Citation: Jay Rodolitz, Vaughn Hamilton, Madiha Tabassum, Ada Lerner, Megan Hofmann. (2025). "As Someone Who is Disabled, I am so thankful for Sex Work": Alternative Approaches to Access Among Disabled Sex-Workers ASSETS, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1145/3663547.3746375 -
“A Blocklist is a Boundary”: Tensions between Community Protection and Mutual Aid on Federated Social Networks
Citation: Erika Melder, Ada Lerner, Michael A. DeVito. (2025). "A Blocklist is a Boundary": Tensions between Community Protection and Mutual Aid on Federated Social Networks Proc. ACM Hum. Comput. Interact., 9, 1-30. https://doi.org/10.1145/3710919 -
Investigating Moderation Challenges to Combating Hate and Harassment: The Case of Mod-Admin Power Dynamics and Feature Misuse on Reddit
Citation: Madiha Tabassum, Alana Mackey, Ashley Schuett, Ada Lerner. (2024). Investigating Moderation Challenges to Combating Hate and Harassment: The Case of Mod-Admin Power Dynamics and Feature Misuse on Reddit USENIX Security Symposium. https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity24/presentation/tabassum -
‘Custodian of Online Communities’: How Moderator Mutual Support in Communities Help Fight Hate and Harassment Online
Citation: Madiha Tabassum, Alana Mackey, Ada Lerner. (2024). 'Custodian of Online Communities': How Moderator Mutual Support in Communities Help Fight Hate and Harassment Online SOUPS @ USENIX Security Symposium, 297-314. https://www.usenix.org/conference/soups2024/presentation/tabassum-madiha -
Counting Carrds: Investigating Personal Disclosure and Boundary Management in Transformative Fandom
Citation: Kelly Wang, Dan Bially Levy, Kien T. Nguyen, Ada Lerner, Abigail Marsh. (2024). Counting Carrds: Investigating Personal Disclosure and Boundary Management in Transformative Fandom CHI, 575:1-575:13. https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642664 -
Privacy Norms of Transformative Fandom: A Case Study of an Activity-Defined Community
Citation: Abby Marsh, Ada Lerner. (2024). Privacy Norms of Transformative Fandom: A Case Study of an Activity-Defined Community Proc. ACM Hum. Comput. Interact., 8, 1-29. -
SoK: Technical Implementation and Human Impact of Internet Privacy Regulations
Citation: Eleanor Birrell, Jay Rodolitz, Angel Ding, Jenna Lee, Emily McReynolds, Jevan Hutson, Ada Lerner. (2023). SoK: Technical Implementation and Human Impact of Internet Privacy Regulations CoRR, abs/2312.15383. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2312.15383 -
“It’s a Fair Game”, or Is It? Examining How Users Navigate Disclosure Risks and Benefits When Using LLM-Based Conversational Agents
Citation: Zhiping Zhang, Michelle Jia, Hao-Ping Hank Lee, Bingsheng Yao, Sauvik Das, Ada Lerner, Dakuo Wang, Tianshi Li. (2023). "It's a Fair Game", or Is It? Examining How Users Navigate Disclosure Risks and Benefits When Using LLM-Based Conversational Agents CoRR, abs/2309.11653. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2309.11653 -
Buying Privacy: User Perceptions of Privacy Threats from Mobile Apps
Citation: Jenny Tang, Hannah Shoemaker, Leah Teffera, Eleanor Birrell, Ada Lerner. (2022). Buying Privacy: User Perceptions of Privacy Threats from Mobile Apps CoRR, abs/2211.07235. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2211.07235 -
How Well Do My Results Generalize Now? The External Validity of Online Privacy and Security Surveys
Citation: Jenny Tang, Eleanor Birrell, and Ada Lerner. "How Well Do My Results Generalize Now? The External Validity of Online Privacy and Security Surveys." In Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS), 2022. -
The Buffet Overflow Café
Citation: Tadayoshi Kohno, Camille Cobb, Ada Lerner, Michelle Lin, Adam Shostack. (2022). The Buffet Overflow Café IEEE Secur. Priv., 20, 4-7. https://doi.org/10.1109/MSEC.2022.3173122 -
Defining Privacy: How Users Interpret Technical Terms in Privacy Policies
Citation: Jenny Tang, Hannah Shoemaker, Ada Lerner, and Eleanor Birrell. "Defining Privacy: How Users Interpret Technical Terms in Privacy Policies." In Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies, 2021(3):70-94., 2021. DOI: 10.2478/popets-2021-0038 -
Privacy and Activism in the Transgender Community
Citation: Ada Lerner, Helen Yuxun He, Anna Kawakami, Silvia Catherine Zeamer, and Roberto Hoyle. 2020. Privacy and Activism in the Transgender Community. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–13. DOI: 10.1145/3313831.3376339
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