Dr. Kavous Salehzadeh Niksirat (کاووس صالح‌ زاده نیک‌ سیرت) is a Postdoctoral Fellow (Scientist) at the SPRING Lab, Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy (MPI‐SP), Germany (link to the profile page). He holds a Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) from Kochi University of Technology, Japan, and brings extensive postdoctoral research experience from the University of Lausanne and EPFL.

His research examines how privacy risks emerge from relational and contextual data practices in everyday digital systems. He designs user-centered privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) for social platforms, wearables, and ubiquitous technologies, drawing on empirical HCI methods and participatory design. A core strand of his work focuses on interdependent privacy—how individuals’ privacy is affected by others’ actions in shared digital environments—while another investigates contextual integrity challenges in wearables, digital contact tracing, and the unnoticed creation of sensitive (e.g., health-related) data. In parallel, he conducts meta-research on research transparency, ethics, and methodological rigor, developing frameworks and tools that strengthen empirical privacy and HCI research.

An active contributor to prestigious venues like CHI, USENIX Security, PETS, CSCW, and IMWUT, Dr. Salehzadeh Niksirat has received several distinctions, including Best Paper and Honorable Mention awards.

Linkedin — Scholar — ORCID — dblp