Sara "Scout" Sinclair

I am a Lecturer in the Computer Science Department at Swarthmore College.

Prior to joining Swarthmore, I was the founding Executive Director of Simply Secure. I also worked at Google as a Product Manager (starting in the Associate Product Manager program) on projects in security, Android, and human-rights technology.

I earned my Ph.D. in Computer Security from Dartmouth College with Access Control In and For the Real World.

Contact

My email address is scout (at) swarthmore [dot] edu.

My office is Science Center 262A.

My office hours for Spring 2021 are Mondays and Fridays 10:30-11:20am, and by appointment. Please don't hesitate to get in touch if you would like to set up a meeting.

Teaching

In S21 I am teaching lab sections of CS 31.

Research

My primary research interests are in computer security, human factors, and their intersection ("usable security"). I am also interested in the use of technology to support advocacy and activism for human rights, ethics in technology, how large organizations effect change, and socio-technical systems more broadly. As a human-factors researcher my orientation is primarily qualitative.

Google Scholar has a reasonably complete record of my publications.

What to call me

I usually go by "Scout", which is a nickname given to me in honor of the book To Kill A Mockingbird.

If you are more comfortable using titles, you can call me "Dr. Scout" (my preferred honorific) or "Professor Sinclair".

"Sara" is a very common name and if you use it I am likely to assume you're talking to someone else.

My married name is Brody (my husband is also in the Computer Science Department at Swarthmore). In various places I may also be referred to as "Sara Brody", "Scout Brody", or "Sara 'Scout' Sinclair Brody".