Tarini Saka

Postdoctoral Researcher @ MPI-SP

portrait of Tarini

Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy

Bochum, Germany

Hello! Thank you for stopping by 😊

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy (MPI-SP), working in the Human-Centered Security and Privacy group. I work with the amazing Dr. Yixin Zou on novel risks and harms of AI technology.

Very recently, I was a postdoc at Ruhr University Bochum with the Chair for Security and Privacy of Ubiquitous Systems (UbiSys), working with Prof. Dr. Veelasha Moonsamy.

I did my PhD from the University of Edinburgh with the Artificial Intelligence and its Applications Institute. I was a member of the Technology Usability Lab in Privacy and Security (TULIPS) and the Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (CHAI) Lab. My PhD research revolved around the critical area of organizational phishing management. I applied advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and human-computer interaction (HCI) to develop user-centered approaches for strengthening defenses against phishing attacks.
My PhD supervisors were Dr. Nadin Kokciyan and Dr. Kami Vaniea. They are very cool, do check out our work.

News

1 Aug, 2026

HATS @ SOUPS 2026

I am excited to be part of the organizing committee for the HATS @ SOUPS 2026 workshop! The accepted papers have now been announced, and we are looking forward to meeting everyone in Hannover.

17 Jul, 2026

Paper Accepted!

Our paper, When LLM Governance Falls to Employees: Informal Practices of Responsible AI Use at Work, has been accepted to AIES 2026! The conference received over 1,000 submissions, with 220 papers accepted following peer review.

Looking forward to presenting the work at AIES 2026 in Malmö, Sweden, this October.

20 Feb, 2026

Paper Accepted!

The final study from my PhD thesis, titled AI-Enhanced Email Security: A Novel Pipeline for Phishing Campaign Detection and Profiling, has been accepted for publication in the ACM Transactions on Internet Technology (TOIT) Special Issue on Human-AI Collaboration in Security Operations Centres.

Preprint available here.

Selected Publications

AI-Enhanced Email Security: A Novel Pipeline for Phishing Campaign Detection and Profiling

Saka, Tarini, Vaniea, Kami, and Kökciyan, Nadin

ACM Transactions on Internet Technology (TOIT), Special Issue on Human-AI Collaboration in Security Operations Centres 2026

Paper

Revealed or Reinforced: How Assistive Technologies Shape the Experience with Dark Patterns for Blind and Low-Vision Users

Stanczyk, Agata, Tran, Mindy, Saka, Tarini, Zou, Yixin, and Moonsamy, Veelasha

ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS) 2026

Paper

Judging Phishing Under Uncertainty: How Do Users Handle Inaccurate Automated Advice?

Saka, Tarini, Vakali, Kalliopi, Jenkins, Adam, Kokciyan, Nadin, and Vaniea, Kami

CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '25) — Honourable Mention 🏅 2025

Paper