Student Spotlight: Yuting Liao, PhD Candidate
Yuting Liao joined the iSchool in 2016 after completing her master study in Communication, Culture, and Technology program. Her primary research examines privacy and how people make decisions about information disclosure in various socio-technical contexts, for example, fitness trackers, online social networks, and even in chats with conversational artificial intelligence. Her research has been recognized with a best paper award at the iConference 2019. With Dr. Jessica Vitak, she contributes to an NSF-funded project on mobile privacy and an IMLS-funded project that aims to create resources for librarians and the low-SES families they serve. She is also currently working with her other advisor, Dr. Beth St. Jean, on a volume of Advances in Librarianship,“Roles and Responsibilities of Libraries in Increasing Consumer Health Literacy and Reducing Health Disparities. It is this interdisciplinarity, as well as the innovative ways to decipher various social phenomena in the age of hyperconnectivity that attracted Yuting to the iSchool, though the opportunity to cosplay a robot in a programming game at Maryland Day probably helped. Outside of research, she is a travel photographer with the goal to captures 30 countries before she turns 30 – she’s only got four countries left and two years to do it.