By Trine Jensen, AAU Kommunikation & Public Affairs
Photo: Dina Elmazi

The Inge Lehmann grant is awarded to some of the most talented early-career researchers, aiming to support a more balanced gender representation in research environments.

Carla Florencia Griggio focusses on the importance of promoting diversity in academic environments to ensure that the research and the knowledge it contributes tackles different challenges and benefits a wide range of people. At the Department of Computer Science, a great deal of work is being done to attract strong female candidates and recruiting them as new assistant professors, but there are still few women at associate professor and professor level.

"Grants that seek to improve gender balance, such as the DFF Inge Lehmann, help to retain talent and boost their research, which means better chances of improving the gender balance across all faculty in the future. I’m glad that such a program exists, and I’m honored to have been granted the opportunity to strengthen my career and conduct this important project. I’m excited to contribute to a more diverse faculty, hopefully helping to portray software engineering and human-computer interaction as attractive fields to more women," says Carla. 

A total of DKK 85.5 million has been awarded to 28 projects led by female researchers.

What is text messaging interoperability?

Carla researches text messaging interoperability, which is a feature that allows you to send text messages across different platforms, like WhatsApp and Telegram. This means you can choose which messaging app to use based on the features you like and how easy it is to use, rather than being limited to the apps your friends and family use. 

One of the challenges of interoperability is that it can be difficult for people to control who can contact them and where. This may make it harder to prevent unwanted messages or to maintain distinct boundaries between personal and professional communications. 

Carla's research project aims to create guidelines for designing messaging apps that allow for interoperability while still respecting people’s boundaries. She plans to do this by studying the latest interoperable messaging technologies, designing new app prototypes, and testing them with real users to see what works best. The goal is to come up with reliable guidelines for app makers and policymakers to help them build messaging platforms in a way that gives you more freedom to choose your preferred apps while letting you stay in control of your conversations and privacy.

Potential impact in society

What motivates Carla the most is the huge potential impact her research can have in society. When we look at online communication platforms today, users have very little control over their communication. If, for example, Meta, WhatsApp or SnapChat change their privacy policy, design or are out of service, the users experience how little control they have because it is the companies, that have the power.

"I believe that having more control over how and where we communicate is crucial in today’s digital society. This grant will allow me to dedicate more time and resources to understanding how to achieve this by designing new messaging platforms that promote freedom of choice and offer flexible, easy-to-use management of online privacy" concludes Carla.