About

I am Shidong Pan :)

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Data Science at New York University and the Law School at Columbia University (jointly-affiliated).

I completed my Ph.D. at Australian National University and CSIRO’s Data61, supervised by Zhenchang Xing. I’m also co-supervised by Sherry Xu and Mark Staples. I was a visiting PhD student of Prof. David Lo in Singapore Management University. I earned Master of Machine Learning and Computer Vision at Australian National University, advised by Zhenchang Xing and Hongdong Li. Before my graduate education, I earned the Bachelor of Advanced Computing (Honours) at Australian National University, advised by Dongwoo Kim, and the Bachelor of Computer Science and Technology at Shandong University (Weihai).

Email: Shidong[dot]Pan[at]nyu[dot]edu OR sp4471[at]columbia[dot]edu

Research

My research lies at the intersection of Usable Privacy & Security, Responsible AI, and Law. I am broadly interested in developing methodologies and tools that ensure AI and software systems are usable, secure, and compliant with privacy laws, to implement the general Responsible AI principles in practice. My work emphasizes bridging technical innovations to foster transparency, responsibility, and compliance in ubiquitous software/AIware systems to benefit developers, end-users, and regulators.

1) My work focuses on the privacy policy which bridge the software engineering practices and privacy law compliance, identifying and addressing fundamental challenges of the whole lifecycle of the privacy policy.

The generation of privacy policies in software engineering process [Security’24 (a)][arXiv]
The compliance of privacy policies against privacy laws and regulations [Security’24 (a)][IST’25]
The usability of privacy policies and notices [Security’24 (b)][Oakland’25] [CHI’25]

2) My work investigate methods for implementing Responsible AI principles through algorithmic fairness and transparency, exploring ethical challenges and implications. [AI&Ethics’24(a)][AI&Ethics’24(b)]

3) My research builds foundational insights into software engineering processes to enhance privacy and security, ultimately.

LLMs for Context-aware Code Generation [TSE’24]
Vulnerability Textual Description Augmentation and Utilization [TSE’25]
Program Analysis for Android Applications [TOSEM’25][arXiv]

News

[Mar 2025] Our paper "A Big Step Forward? A User-Centric Examination of iOS App Privacy Report and Enhancements" has been accepted by S&P 2025! Congrats to Liu Wang! The pre-print is coming soon!
[Feb 2025] Our paper "Privacy Meets Explainability: Managing Confidential Data and Transparency Policies in LLM-Empowered Science" has been accepted by CHI 2025 Late-Breaking Work! Congrats to Yasho! The pre-print is coming soon!
[Feb 2025] I am serving on the Program Committee of 40th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2025). Welcome submissions!
[Feb 2025] I delivered a talk to Detail Lab at the New York University. Thanks for the invitation, Dr. Sunoo Park!
[Jan 2025] I will be visiting and delivering a seminar at the Department of Computer Science, Technical University of Munich (TUM). Thanks for the invitation, Prof. Chunyang Chen!
[Jan 2025] I will be attending the Dagstuhl Seminar 25021 - Grand Challenges for Research on Privacy Documents in Dagsthul, Germany, 05-10 January
[Dec 2024] Our paper "Do Chase Your Tail! Missing Key Aspects Augmentation in Textual Vulnerability Descriptions of Long-tail Software through Feature Inference" has been accepted by Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE)! Congrats to Linyi Han! The pre-print is available on arXiv.
[Oct 2024] I'm excited to announce that our team, comprising researchers from CSIRO's Data61 and Singapore Management University, has secured approximately AUD 700k in funding for our project, ESG-based Responsible AI: Toward Green, Secure, and Compliant LLM Utilisation for Digital Service Development Process. This project is funded under the CSIRO & A*STAR Research-Industry 2+2 Partnership Program. Thanks to other PIs Prof. David Lo and Sherry Xu! Looking forward to advancing this important work!
[Oct 2024] I'm delightful to share that I have been invited to the Dagstuhl Seminar 25021 - Grand Challenges for Research on Privacy Documents. Thanks for the invitation!
[Oct 2024] Our paper " $A^3$ -CodGen : A Repository-Level Code Generation Framework for Code Reuse with Local-Aware, Global-Aware, and Third-Party-Library-Aware" has been accepted by Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE)! Congrats to Dianshu Liao! The pre-print is available on arXiv.
[August 2024] I visited the CyLab at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). Thank you, Prof. Cranor!
[August 2024] I will be attending the USENIX Security Symposium in Phialadelphia PA, USA 14-16 August.
[July 2024] I was invited to be a guest speaker for the HumaniSE Lab seminar series at Monash University. Thank you, Prof. Grundy!
[May 2024] Our paper "Don't Chase Your Tail! Missing Key Aspects Augmentation in Textual Vulnerability Descriptions of Long-tail Software through Feature Inference" is now available on arXiv.
[May 2024] I delivered the Software Engineering course at Shandong University (Weihai)! Thanks to ANU and SDUW for offering me this opportunity!
[Apr 2024] I am delightful to share that I have received the Google Conference Travel Grant! Thanks Google Australia Research!
[Mar 2024] I was invited to be the guest lecturer for the Usable Security and Privacy course at the University of Edinburgh. Thanks Jingjie!
[Feb 2024] Our paper " {A New Hope}: Contextual Privacy Policies for Mobile Applications And an Approach Toward Automated Generation" has been accepted by USENIX Security 2024! Big thanks to all collaborators from four institutions across three continents!
[Jan 2024] I attended Australasian Commputer Science Week at UNSW (Sydney).
[Dec 2023] Our paper "Context-Aware Code Generation Framework for Code Repositories: Local, Global, and Third-Party Library Awareness" is now available on arXiv.
[Nov 2023] I attended Workshop on 'AI governance and standards: comparative approaches’ at Monash University.
[Sep 2023] Our paper "Is It a Trap? A Large-scale Empirical Study And Comprehensive Assessment of Online Automated Privacy Policy Generators for Mobile Apps" has been accepted by USENIX Security 2024!
[Aug 2023] Our paper "SeePrivacy: Automated Contextual Privacy Policy Generation for Mobile Applications" is now available on arXiv.
[May 2023] Our paper "A Large-scale Empirical Study of Online Automated Privacy Policy Generators for Mobile Apps" is now available on arXiv.
[Mar 2023] I will start my academic visit at Singapore Management University with Prof. David Lo!
[Feb 2023] Our paper "To Be Forgotten or To Be Fair: Unveiling Fairness Implications of Machine Unlearning Methods" has been accepted on AITA: AI Trustworthiness Assessment, AAAI, 2023!
[Oct 2021] I will start my Ph.D. with Prof. Zhenchang Xing in 2021 Fall!
[June 2021] I've earned my Master of Machine Learning and Computer Vision at Australian National University!