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 ].

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Past news

2024

• 📝 Wrote a Medium article for ACM CSCW 2024 & presented my first publication related to my multi-year community-based partnership research with addressing burnout among local frontline anti-violence workers! 📝 I was also a guest editor on the Grad Student Bulletin for NU’s Center for Civic Engagement

• Attended the Tapia Conference in San Diego, CA + moderated an Alumni Panel event for Northwestern’s Center for HCI+D + instructing students in an Independent Project/Study course on creating educational tech ethics content + 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) & passed my first Communications qualifying exam!

2023

• I presented my research to undergraduates at Northwestern’s Introduction to Graduate Education (IGEN) program that aims to support & diversify undergraduates interested in doctoral studies

• I was awarded the Northwestern Tech Ethics Fellowship (Faculty Liaison) and currently support faculty in integrating ethics into computer science courses & research labs

• Received “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“ has been accepted to and 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

• First-author paper, “On Hackathons: A Multidisciplinary Literature Review”, was accepted to CHI 2023