About Me

I graduated from the accelerated Master of HCI program in December 2020 shortly after receiving a Bachelor in Humanities & Arts (BHA) in Economics and Music Harp Performance, with an additional major in HCI in May 2020, both from Carnegie Mellon University. Outside of research, I’m baking fruit tarts & cookies, top-rope climbing, doodling & needle-felting, or training my cat, Spaghetti, to do little tricks. Email me at [ conniewchau@u.northwestern.edu ].

Let’s follow each other on LinkedIn or BlueSky!

Past news

2025

• Worked as a UX Research Intern NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado

• 🏅 Awarded by AcademyHealth to attend their Annual Research Meeting as a Health Equity Scholars Program 2025 Scholar

• 🏆 📝 Received & presented my Best Paper Honorable Mention-awarded paper at CHI 2025

• Presented on trauma-informed computing & design to researchers at the Alan Turing Institute

• 🏅 Awarded a microgrant from The Cyber Collective to support community-based digital literacy & safety

• 🏅 Awarded for my service & leadership in the CS PhD Advisory Board by the Northwestern Computer Science Department

• Presented a poster at the NU IPHAM Public Health Summit 2025 and poster talk at the 13th Scientific Meeting of the International Society of Research on Internet Interventions (ISRII)

• Presented my doctoral work with my community partner at the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV) Economic Justice Summit

• Facilitated an expert panel on Tech Abuse & Safety at the Reclaiming Our Love: 4th Social Justice & Domestic Violence Conference

• 🏅 Awarded the ARCC 2025 Partnership Development Grant to create a community advisory board for my work creating an intervention to support the work of frontline workers in domestic violence!

• 👩🏻‍🏫 📝 Mentored Angela Davis (BS/MS in Computer Science, 2024) and published together a Late Breaking Work at CHI 2025 on using crowdsourcing to identify triggers for photosensitive epilepsy

2024

• 📝 Published “Envisioning the Future of Burnout: Understanding Frontline Workers' Experiences in Nonprofit Gender-Based Violence Organizations” at ACM CSCW 2024, and published a companion Medium article

• Invited to write as a guest editor on the Grad Student Bulletin for NU’s Center for Civic Engagement

• 👩🏻‍🏫 Mentored & instructed students in an Independent Project/Study course on creating educational tech ethics content

• Attended the Tapia Conference in San Diego, CA

• Moderated an Alumni Panel event for Northwestern’s Center for HCI+D

• Provided another training on tech-facilitated abuse for The Network’s 40+ agencies

• Created & led a presentation on digital literacy & safety (including spotting scams & AI-generated images, deceptive or “dark” patterns in UX, and hallucinations in LLMs) and careers in computing to 85+ youth members at YWCA Evanston/North Shore.

• Joined the We Deserve Better Project, a grassroots group of anti-violence workers committed to creating better working conditions that mutually benefit advocates and survivors.

• Presented at The Network’s bi-monthly membership meeting (with representatives from 40+ agencies in domestic violence) & facilitated another training on Technology-Facilitated Abuse.

• Facilitated 2 workshops on wellness for graduate students (a follow-up to my last presentation on burnout back in May 2023)

2023

• Presented my research and provided mentorship to undergraduates at Northwestern’s Introduction to Graduate Education (IGEN) program which aims to support & diversify undergraduates interested in doctoral studies

• 🏅Awarded the Northwestern Tech Ethics Fellowship (Faculty Liaison) and collaborated with faculty to integrate ethics into computer science courses & research labs

• 🏅Awarded “Honorable Mention” for the Ford Foundation 2023 Predoctoral Fellowship Competition

• Presented a talk on technology-facilitated abuse at The Network: Advocating Against Domestic Violence's Reclaiming Our Love: Social Justice & Domestic Violence Virtual Conference

• First work-in-progress workshop paper, “From self to community care: The need for multilevel interventions to address advocate burnout in gender-based violence“ was accepted to & invited for an oral presentation at the Workgroup on Interactive Systems in Healthcare (WISH) Symposia at CHI 2023

• Presented a poster at the CRA-WP Grad Cohort Workshop for Women in San Francisco, California

• Presented a lightning talk at the CRA-WP Grad Cohort Workshop for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Leadership Skills (IDEALS) in Honolulu, Hawaii

• 🏅Selected as a 2023 Edward Alexander Bouchet Graduate Honor Society Inductee

• 📝 Published “On Hackathons: A Multidisciplinary Literature Review” to CHI 2023