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Professor of Information Systems · Associate Dean for Research
“Privacy, access control and the economics of trustworthy AI. Teaches MIS to 400 undergrads a year.”
Helen Zhao studies how organizations decide who may see what — from attribute-based access control policies to the governance of AI systems that act on our behalf. Before Northfield she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Meridian Institute and completed her PhD with David Okafor at Harborview. She teaches the core Management Information Systems course and a doctoral seminar on IS research, and directs the Trust & Privacy Lab.
Associate Dean for Research · Northfield University · Hayden Hall 412
I asked for a recommendation letter for a summer program with very short notice. She asked me for a one-page summary of what I did in class, then wrote the letter within four days. Lectures are clear and she brings AI policy news into every class.
The access-control lab where you write policies for a fake hospital and then try to break your classmates' policies was the highlight of my degree. It's a lot of work — weekly labs plus a policy memo — but you leave knowing how real systems decide who sees what. Several of us got internship interviews because of the final project.
Transactions on Privacy & Governance OASample
Decision Systems JournalSample
Helen Q. Zhao, Kenji Mori, Hannah Schultz
Information Systems Quarterly ReviewSample