Assistant Professor Rishab Nithyanand has received a 2018 Google Faculty Research Award for his proposal that seeks to "improve transparency around the online data brokering ecosystem by building a framework through which data sharing relationships between online services (websites and mobile apps), online data brokers, and third-party trackers can be identified. We expect that the output of this research will improve the user's ability to issue informed consent to online tracking, the regulator's ability to verify tracker compliance with existing regulations, and more generally result in a better understanding of the online privacy landscape.

Research question: Which online services and trackers share user data with which data brokers?"

Per Google: "This round we received 910 proposals covering 40 countries and over 320 universities. After expert reviews and committee discussions, we decided to fund 158 projects. The subject areas that received the most support this year were human computer interaction, machine learning, machine perception, and systems."

"[The] grants cover tuition for a graduate student and provide both faculty and students the opportunity to work directly with Google researchers and engineers."