Rishab Nithyanand holds a affiliated appointment in the College of Law and co-directs the Center for Publics, Platforms, and Personalization (CP3). He is also an assistant professor and emeriti-faculty scholar in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Iowa where he leads the SPARTA lab.

Research Interests

Rishab’s research is broadly in the areas of privacy and social computing. His work is focused on fostering transparency and accountability in the online data ecosystem through a rigorous examination of the algorithms and processes used by ad-tech and social media platforms.

Research Interests (Keywords)

Privacy, Social Computing, Social Media, Advertising, Tracking

Selected publications

• Yash Vekaria, Rishab Nithyanand, Zubair Shafiq. “The Inventory is Dark and Full of Misinformation: Understanding the Abuse of Ad Inventory Pooling in the Ad-Tech Supply Chain”. IEEE Security and Privacy 2024.
• Sarmad Chandio, Rishab Nithyanand. “How Audit Methods Impact Our Understanding of YouTube’s Recommendation Systems”. AAAI ICWSM 2024.
• Mihailis Diamantis, Maaz Bin Musa, Lucas Ausberger, Rishab Nithyanand. “Forms of Disclosure: The Path to Automating Closed Book Privacy Audits”. Harvard Journal of Law and Technology (Volume 37, Issue 3).
• Arun Dunna, Katherine Keith, Ethan Zuckerman, Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez, Brendan O’ Connor, Rishab Nithyanand. “Paying Attention to the Algorithm: Bringing Transparency to YouTube’s Demonetization Algorithms”. ACM CSCW 2022.
• Hussam Habib, Padmini Srinivasan, Rishab Nithyanand. “Making a Radical Misogynist: How Social Engagement with the Manosphere Influences Traits of Radicalization”. ACM CSCW 2022.
• Hussam Habib, Maaz Bin Musa, Fareed Zaffar, Rishab Nithyanand. “Are Proactive Interventions for Reddit Communities Feasible?”. AAAI ICWSM 2022.
• Maaz Bin Musa, Rishab Nithyanand. “ATOM: Ad-Network Tomography. A Generalizable Technique for Inferring Tracker-Advertiser Data Sharing in the Online Behavioral Advertising Ecosystem”. PETS 2022.