SPOT Lab

The SPOT (Security, Privacy, and Online Trust) Lab is an interdisciplinary research group directed by Collins Munyendo launching in Fall 2027 in the Department of Computer Science at the National University of Singapore. The lab broadly works on digital security, privacy, and safety from a human-centered perspective. We use a diverse set of computational and social science methods to spot security, privacy, safety, and usability challenges in both existing and emerging technologies, then design and rigorously evaluate solutions that address those challenges. Some current directions we are exploring include:

• User Authentication: Passwords (including password-less options like passkeys) remain unusable in practice. We are interested in making authentication both usable and secure for users.
• Underserved Users: Most human-centered security and privacy research has focused on specific populations, undermining generalizability of solutions. We are interested in exploring and addressing the challenges of various underserved groups around the world such as majority world users.
• Organizational Security: Organizations and particularly small and medium-sized organizations (SMEs) are often resource-contrained and may not prioritize security. We are interested in understanding the needs of SMEs and designing solutions that address those needs.

We are always looking for talented students and interns to join our lab. If any of the above topics interest you, please check the join us page for more details on how you can get involved.