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
Presented my doctoral work with my community partner at the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV) Economic Justice Summit and 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! 📊 My undergrad (now graduated) mentee’s paper on using crowdsourcing to identify triggers for photosensitive epilepsy was accepted to CHI LBW!
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 + instructed 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