Nicola Dell

I am an Associate Professor at Cornell Tech and part of the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute. I advise PhD students in Cornell's  Information Science and Computer Science departments. At Cornell Tech, I co-founded the Clinic to End Tech Abuse. I also co-lead the Initiative on Home Care Work in the Center for Applied Research on Work (CAROW) and was the 2023 Siegel Faculty Impact Fellow in the Public Interest Technology Initiative. I am the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship (2024), SIGCHI Societal Impact Award (2023), Advocate of New York City Award (2019), and NSF CAREER Award (2018). I earned my Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington.

I study, build, and deploy sociotechnical systems that make our technology-mediated world safer and more equitable, particularly for underserved or at-risk communities. My work is situated primarily in the fields of human-computer interaction (HCI), information & communication technologies and development (ICTD), and computer security & privacy. I have worked with survivors of intimate partner violence, human trafficking, online hate and harassment, frontline workers, older adults, teachers, refugees, communities in the Global South, and more. My work integrates interdisciplinary methodologies that, together, maximize near-term societal impact while pioneering new academic research directions. These methods include qualitative research, online measurement studies and analyses, community-engaged design and system building, longitudinal field deployments, randomized controlled trials, and more.