About
I am a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Software and Societal Systems Department at Carnegie Mellon University, supervised by Lujo Bauer and Lorrie Cranor. My research is at the intersection of formal methods and usable security. More specifically, I am interested in finding ways to help users (even ones without technical backgrounds) write policies and understand the theoretical guarantees these formal systems can provide.
For my undergraduate, I double majored in Computer Science and Mathematics and minored in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at Kansas State University. I was an intern at Garmin from 2012-2016 in the aviation department and worked primarily on the flight display systems. I then received my PhD in 2023 from the Electrical & Computer Engineering department at Carnegie Mellon University, advised by Limin Jia.
You can find a recent video of me talking about my research on YouTube here.
I pronounce my own name "muh-ken-nuh muh-call," but pronouncing the "Mc" like in "McDonalds" is also perfectly acceptable.
Publications
"You do understand that people don’t trust technology?": Explaining Trusted Execution Environments to Non-Experts.
McKenna McCall*, Carolina Carreira*, Miguel Flores, and Lorrie Faith Cranor. Under review. [Pre-Print]
Tainted Secure Multi-Execution to Restrict Attacker Influence.
McKenna McCall, Abhishek Bichhawat, and Limin Jia. CCS 2023. [PDF] [TR]
Towards Usable Security Analysis Tools for Trigger-Action Programming.
McKenna McCall, Eric Zeng, Faysal Hossain Shezan, Mitchell Yang, Lujo Bauer, Abhishek Bichhawat, Camille Cobb, Limin Jia, and Yuan Tian. SOUPS 2023. [PDF] [Data]
Information Flow Control for Dynamic Reactive Systems.
McKenna McCall. Carnegie Mellon University 2023 (PhD thesis). [PDF]
Compositional Information Flow Monitoring for Reactive Programs.
McKenna McCall, Abhishek Bichhawat, and Limin Jia. Euro S&P 2022. [PDF] [TR]
Gradual Security Types and Gradual Guarantees.
Abhishek Bichhawat, McKenna McCall, and Limin Jia. CSF 2021. [PDF] Earlier version [TR]
Knowledge-based Security of Dynamic Secrets for Reactive Programs.
McKenna McCall, Hengruo Zhang, and Limin Jia. CSF 2018. [PDF] [TR]
A Sequent Calculus for Counterfactual Reasoning.
McKenna McCall, LayKuan Loh, and Limin Jia. PLAS 2017 [PDF] [TR]
*These authors contributed to this work equally.
Unpublished Reports
SafeTAP: An Efficient Incremental Analyzer for Trigger-Action Programs.
McKenna McCall, Faysal Hossain Shezan, Abhishek Bichhawat, Camille Cobb, Limin Jia, Yuan Tian, Cooper Grace, Mitchell Yang. [TR]
Honors & Awards
IEEE Euro S&P 2022 Outstanding Presentation Award for Compositional Information Flow Monitoring for Reactive Programs
IEEE S&P (Oakland) 2021 Shadow PC Distinguished Reviewer
CyLab Presidential Fellowship, 2020
Service
Professional Service
NSF SaTC Vision 2.0 Workshop Attendee, 2023
University and Departmental Service
CyLab Student Seminar committee, Summer 2024-Fall 2024
CyLab JEDI committee, Spring 2024-Fall 2024
Ombudsperson for the Research Experience for Undergraduates Program, Summer 2024
REUSE admissions comittee, 2024
Universal Access Committee and Facilities Working Group, Spring 2022-Spring 2023
Dining Student Advisory Council, Spring 2022-Spring 2023
CyLab Mentor, Fall 2022
CIO Advisory Council, Summer 2022-Fall 2022
Advisory Committee for the CMU Student Academic Sucess Center Executive Director Search, Spring 2022
CMU Graduate Student Assembly VP of Campus Affairs, Spring 2022
Parking & Transportation Advisory Committee, Spring 2022
CMU Graduate Student Assembly Partner and Family Advocate, Spring 2021-Fall 2021
Family Care Advisory Committee, Spring 2021-Summer 2021
ECE Diversity Committee, Spring 2021
Program Committees
USENIX Security Program Committee, 2025
CSF Program Committee, 2025
PriSC Program Committee, 2023-24
FCS Program Committee, 2023
CCS Poster Committee, 2022
IEEE S&P (Oakland) Program Committee, 2022
IEEE S&P (Oakland) Shadow PC, 2021
Teaching
Fall 2023: Guest Lecture on Information Flow Control for Software Foundations of Security and Privacy (15-316)
Fall 2021: TA for Introduction to Information Security (18-631/14-741)
Fall 2017: TA for Introduction to Information Security (18-631/14-741)