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
Mastodon: @kentrellowens

About Me

I'm a fifth (and final!) year PhD candidate at the University of Washington in the Security & Privacy Research Lab. My advisors are Tadayoshi Kohno and Franziska Roesner. My research interests are broadly (usable) computer security & privacy, with a specific focus on underserved or marginalized communities. Through my research, I attempt to do impactful computer security & privacy research that fulfills my sense of curiosity, justice, and hope. My long-term vision is to ensure that technology does not disproportionately harm those with the least power to resist it. If you're looking for a postdoc, I'm on the job market for opportunities!

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

March 4, 2025 - I would like to say "Danke schön" to Yixin Zou at the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy in Bochum and Sven Bugiel at the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security in Saarbrücken for hosting me last week. I gave my talk "Technology and Power: Examining Imbalances Through Usable Security & Privacy Research" and got a great reception and lots of good questions from attendees. It was wonderful to meet the world-class researchers at these institutes!

December 18, 2024 - Last week I did a Research Exchange at ICSI at UC Berkeley hosted by Serge Egelman. I met with researchers there, gave a presentation about my work, and got some valuable feedback on proposed work. It was the most time I've spent in Berkeley, and I had a great time there.

October 25, 2024 - I really enjoyed my time at the 2024 New England Computing & Data Science Rising Stars Program at Boston University. I received genuinely useful mentorship from the faculty and staff there, and I was able to connect with several peers doing inspiring work. I look forward to keeping in touch with them!

Publications

2025

  • Understanding Experiences with Compulsory Immigration Surveillance in the U.S.
    Kentrell Owens, Yael Eiger, Basia Radka, Tadayoshi Kohno, and Franziska Roesner.
    ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT), June 2025.

  • The Surveillance AI Pipeline. [preprint]
    Pratyusha Ria Kalluri*, William Agnew*, Myra Cheng*, Kentrell Owens*, Luca Soldaini*, Abeba Birhane*
    Nature (forthcoming). 2025.
    * co-first authors

  • "You Have to Ignore the Dangers": User Perceptions of the Security and Privacy Benefits of WhatsApp Mods. [preprint]
    Collins W. Munyendo*, Kentrell Owens*, Faith Strong, Shaoqi Wang, Adam J. Aviv, Tadayoshi Kohno, and Franziska Roesner.
    46th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (IEEE S&P). May 2025.

2024

2022

2021

2020

2019

Mentoring

I've had the opportunity to work with wonderful undergraduate and masters students in the past, including:

Last updated April 2025.