Picture of Kentrell Owens, a handsome young man, presenting a poster at a conference

Kentrell Owens

PhD Candidate (2020 - present)

Computer Science and Engineering
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington, USA
[my first name]@cs.washington.edu
Curriculum Vitae

My pronouns are he/him.
Google Scholar
Twitter: @KentrellOwens
Mastodon: @kentrellowens

About Me

I'm a fourth year PhD candidate at the University of Washington in the Security & Privacy Research Lab. My advisors are Franziska Roesner and Tadayoshi Kohno. My research area is computer security and privacy. My research interests include usable security and privacy, mobile/IoT security and privacy, and web security and privacy. I'm specifically interested in the computer security and privacy needs of underserved communities.

I earned my M.S. in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA) where I worked with Lorrie Cranor, and my B.S. from Rice University (Houston, TX). I grew up in rural northern Louisiana, and I'm a first-generation college student. I owe the victories in my life to all the investments my friends, family, teachers, and communities have made in me. If you're reading this, you might be one of those people; thank you!

Updates

05/3/2024 - Hello! Last week I passed my Generals Exam (UW CSE's thesis proposal), and I'm a PhD candidate! I will attempt to update this website more frequently, as exciting things are happening! I'm currently waiting to hear back regarding two recent paper submissions and plan to submit another in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for good news!

04/2/2023 - This weekend I attended the Beyond the FTC: The Future of Privacy Enforcement workshop at Harvard Law School. It was a fantastic experience, and I was able to meet several law and CS scholars whose work I had read.

09/12/2022 - Last month I returned from spending a summer in Kolkata, West Bengal, India, studying Bangla (aka Bengali, the 7th most spoken language in the world) on a Critical Language Scholarship. It was a great experience, and my Bangla has significantly improved! I recently presented our work at USENIX Security in Boston, attended the Tapia Conference in DC, and at the end of the month I'm going to Germany to present at EuroUSEC. Lots of travel ahead!

Publications

2022

2021

2020

2019

Last updated May 2024.