Sarah Elizabeth Gillespie

Photo of a white woman with brown hair standing in front of the Boston harbor

About Me

I am a fourth-year PhD student in Computer Science working with Dr. Christo Wilson at Northeastern University's Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute. I am an organizer of the Khoury Women's PhD Group. My research focuses on consumer protection and AI ethics through a multidisciplinary approach. Depending on the project, this could range from qualitative coding to intercepting app traffic to analyzing network patterns.

Before Northeastern, I attended Smith College for undergrad, earning my BA in Quantitative Economics and Statistical and Data Science in 2022. I then worked at Sartorius Stedim Biotech in a Biosafety Level 2 laboratory as a metrology/quality engineer, including involvement in routine FDA audits.

I have two ongoing projects. One is AI Social Robots, which looks at safety analysis regarding consumer social robots' response content, self-harm, and privacy. The second is Heterogeneity of Vehicle DSAR Responses, which extends my prior network traffic vehicle analysis by also analyzing about 40 crowd-sourced DSAR responses from participant's vehicle companies. Once I get these two papers submitted, I aspire to look at surveillance pricing next.

I often have a volunteer (unpaid) spot in my projects for a smart, hardworking undergrad who wants research experience on the research topics I'm currently examining. Send an email if you're interested.

News

September 2026: Journalists from The Verge and Consumer Reports interviewed my co-authors and me for articles about "Automatic Transmission: An Empirical Study of Data Privacy in the Connected Vehicle Ecosystem."

August 2026: Our paper "Automatic Transmission: An Empirical Study of Data Privacy in the Connected Vehicle Ecosystem was accepted at IMC 2026. Co-first author on this work. Nicole Zagson made a fantastic website for this project.

April 2026: I was selected as a Trainee Fellowship as part of the National Science Foundation Research Traineeship Program, Platform for Exchange and Allocation of Resources. This fellowship provides up to two years of funding and focuses on interdisciplinary work to integrate applicable findings/theories on emerging technologies into business, policy, and social science into ethical engineering design and practice.

January-May 2026: TA for CS4700 (Network Fundamentals).

March 2026: Our paper "It's not a representation of me": Examining Accent Bias and Digital Exclusion in Synthetic AI Voice Services paper was referenced in the Wired article titled "Summon This AI Agent by Speaking Its Wake Word Mid-Phone Call".

June 2025: Our paper "It's not a representation of me": Examining Accent Bias and Digital Exclusion in Synthetic AI Voice Services was accepted at ACM FAccT 2025.

April 2025: Our paper Promises, Promises: Understanding Claims Made in Social Robot Consumer Experiences was accepted at CHI 2025.

May 2024: Presented Investigating the Datafication of Your Car at IEEE Security 8th Workshop on Technology and Consumer Protection (ConPro '24).

September 2023: Began my PhD in Computer Science at Northeastern University with the Khoury Distinguished Fellowship.

Publications

"Automatic Transmission: An Empirical Study of Data Privacy in the Connected Vehicle Ecosystem Co-first author.

"It's not a representation of me": Examining Accent Bias and Digital Exclusion in Synthetic AI Voice Services was presented at ACM FAccT 2025.

Promises, Promises: Understanding Claims Made in Social Robot Consumer Experiences was presented at CHI 2025.

Investigating the Datafication of Your Car was presented at IEEE Security 8th Workshop on Technology and Consumer Protection (ConPro '24.)

Research Interests

Useful Links

Curriculum Vitae

Google Scholar

Github

Khoury Profile

LinkedIn

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