Two INI Students Present Their Work on AI Powered Fraud Detection at the Premier Privacy Conference

Last month, security researchers, leaders and policymakers met in New York City to discuss the privacy landscape and share the latest research. With themes covering organizational and user-centered privacy as well as designs and emerging challenges, the IEEE Symposium on Privacy Expectations (ISoPE) marked a successful second year. 

The 2026 conference was co-chaired by Assistant Teaching Professor Dr. Hanan Hibshi and featured work by two Information Networking Institute (INI) students. 

“As Co-Chair, I greatly enjoyed bringing together diverse stakeholders to engage in meaningful discussions on privacy, security and the societal implications of emerging technologies,” said Dr. Hibshi. “I also had a proud Tartan moment meeting current Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) students and alumni and seeing how they continue to shape the field of privacy through their professional contributions and leadership long after their time at CMU.”

Attending this year’s conference were two students from Dr. Hibshi’s special topics course, 14-713: Secure and Responsible AI: Phyllis Chen, a recent graduate of the M.S. in Artificial Intelligence Engineering - Information Security (MSAIE-IS) program, and Sherry Zheng, a current MSAIE-IS student. Chen and Zheng presented work that began in Dr. Hibshi’s course last spring. 

From left to right: Yuebin Mao, Dr. Hanan Hibshi, Sherry Zheng and Phyllis Chen

14-713: Secure and Responsible AI addresses a gap in traditional AI and cybersecurity education, designed to provide a broad range of students with the tools to design systems that responsibly integrate AI. For a project in the course, Chen and Zheng were developing a method to improve identification and tracking of fraudulent transactions in financial systems. “Things tend to move slowly in banking and they do want to implement new and advanced systems that include AI,” said Zheng. “However, AI is expensive. So, the goal of our project is to figure out how to incorporate AI in a way that is scalable and not wasteful.”  

Throughout the course, they learned key parts of the AI pipeline to understand how they could design a solution that would be sustainable and valuable. “A major part of the project was data minimization,” said Chen. “We learned all the different points on the pipeline, even simple machine learning pipelines, to identify every point where something could go wrong and ensure that what we developed was secure, ethical and always responsible.” 

Dr. Hibshi’s course provided a strong foundation for Chen and Zheng to build on. “I think the best part of the course for me was how applicable it is in the real world,” said Zheng. “Nothing we learned was obsolete. We would read research papers, and those kept us up –to date with what was going on in industry.” 

When the call opened for ISoPE 2026, Zheng and Chen submitted their Secure and Responsible AI course project and were accepted. It was the first time that either of the two attended ISoPE and its interdisciplinary nature stood out for them both. “The range of knowledge that was in attendance was incredible,” said Chen. “Even in school I didn’t really get the chance to interact with people from different disciplines or different levels of experience and knowledge. This was the first time I got to listen to people from so many different backgrounds and experience speak about privacy.” 

“It was my first conference,” said Zheng. “I didn’t know what to expect, but  it was a great experience. Research is something I’m passionate about and ISoPE gave me a lot of exposure to what academic conferences look like, and I got to connect with industry leaders within the privacy field.” 

Chen and Zheng presented their work during the Advanced Privacy Techniques in Practice session and had the opportunity to attend presentations and connect with industry professionals and academics. “The best part of research is talking about it and sharing what you did,” said Zheng. “No matter how strenuous and arduous the process is, the outcome makes up for it.” 

“Conferences can be rewarding for anyone,” added Chen. “You get so much support from everyone. They engage with you, make sure that they understand your work, and do a great job of encouraging you. That atmosphere really drives people’s curiosity.”