People of ACM - Nicola Dell

February 18, 2025

How did you first become interested in your specialization within the broader human-computer interaction field?

As a researcher, I am driven to empower people by designing new technologies that have a positive impact. I grew up in Zimbabwe, where limited resources and poor infrastructure posed numerous daily challenges. As I pursued a career in computer and information science, I have thus always been most interested in how computing and digital technologies might empower people to solve problems in complex and messy real-world settings.

At Cornell Tech you (along with Thomas Ristenpart) founded the Clinic to End Tech Abuse (CETA). What are the goals of the CETA? What are some examples of how your work has helped survivors of intimate partner violence?

As digital technologies play growing roles in our everyday lives, they also play increasingly growing and damaging roles in intimate partner violence (IPV). Abusers break into a victim’s devices and accounts, track and monitor a victim’s location and activities, install spyware on victim devices, post sensitive and harassing information online, and more. Attacks are often complex and multi-faceted, with new threats constantly arising via emerging technologies (e.g., airtags, smart homes).

At Cornell Tech, we built a first-of-its-kind clinic to help survivors navigate technology abuse: the Clinic to End Tech Abuse. Based on formative basic research into the nature of tech abuse in IPV, we went on to study how to perform a new kind of interventional approach that we called clinical computer security. In a field study in 2018, we showed how effective this can be in helping survivors of tech abuse. Based on this research, we launched CETA and have been operating it since.

CETA’s mission is to work with IPV survivors and service providers to discover how technology is used to facilitate harm and help survivors stay safe. CETA has become a vital node in New York City's survivor support, technology, and academic research ecosystems. In its six years of operation, CETA has received over 700 survivor referrals from partner agencies, educated hundreds of IPV professionals about technology abuse, advocated for stronger federal and state legislation to protect survivors, advised tech companies’ design of safer products, and more.

What are some of the challenges home healthcare workers face and how does your work aim to tackle these challenges?

As the population ages, many older adults would prefer to remain at home and age in place. However, to do so, they need help from paid Home Health Aides (HHAs), an important group of frontline health workers who are primarily women from racial and ethnic minorities. Despite their growing importance in healthcare and patients’ increasing reliance on their services, research has shown that HHAs are paid low wages, undervalued by the healthcare team, do not receive sufficient training or recognition, operate day-to-day in isolation, and frequently struggle with their own health. HHAs current data collection systems and workplace technologies are hard to use and largely revolve around monitoring HHAs’ labor for compliance and billing, reducing their autonomy over their work and their data, rather than supporting them. The problems HHAs face are only becoming more urgent as the demand for home care services grows.

With my collaborators, I investigate opportunities for digital technologies to ease some of the challenges HHAs face. For example, we’ve developed computer-mediated peer support programs that aim to ease HHAs’ isolation and connect them with communities of peers and mentors. We’ve investigated how to design AI-enabled voice technologies that provide on-the-job support and assistance. And we’ve explored ways to enable data-driven advocacy, supporting the work of labor advocates as they push for improved policies in home care work.