Honors and Awards

• 🏆Honorable Mention (2026)  Best of ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2026) for our paper on ‘Dark Patterns and the EU Digital Services Act: Mapping Autonomy Violations and Design Factors’ for its originality, rigor, and potential impact on the field of human-computer interaction. It exemplifies the kind of forward-thinking, high-quality research that CHI aims to promote and celebrate.
• 🏆NWO Vidi award (2025)
• 🏆J. G Wiarda Prize 2025, School of Law. This award is established by the board and the Research Council of the Utrecht School of Law to praise outstanding scientific publications of senior researchers. Link: https://www.uu.nl/nieuws/cristiana-santos-wins-gj-wiarda-prize-2025 
• 🏆Best Paper Award, Annual Privacy Forum (2025) to the legal-empirical paper Turning to Online Forums for Legal Information: a Case Study of GDPR's Legitimate Interests 
• 🏆I was shortlisted to the W@Privacy Awards in the category of ‘Privacy Icon’ (2025). This initiative celebrates exceptional female leaders in privacy who lead by example, empower others, and make lasting impact in their communities. 
• 🏆French Data Protection Authority (CNIL) Privacy Award (2025) to the paper ‘’Two worlds apart! Closing the gap regulating EU consent and user studies''. This award is meant to promote research in privacy and computer science and to raise awareness among citizens and decision-makers on privacy and data protection issues. 
• 🏆Stefano Rodotà Data Protection Award (2023), Council of Europe award to the paper on “Investigating Deceptive Design in GDPR’s Legitimate Interest”.  This award honors innovative and original academic research projects in the field of data protection. 
• 🏆 European Cyber Women Day Winner (2023) in the category "Cyber Woman Researcher" in Europe
• 🏆Future of Privacy Forum's Annual Privacy Papers for Policymakers Award, Honorable Mention (2023)  (Link to the paper ) "My Cookie is a phoenix: detection, measurement, and lawfulness of cookie respawning with browser fingerprinting" 
• 🏆European Cyber Woman Day Winner (2022) in the category "Cyber Women researcher" in Europe
• Shortlisted to the Woman Privacy Awards  (2022) in the "Best contribution to the community" category
• 🏆Best presentation award, International Workshop on Privacy Engineering (IWPE) (2022)
• 🏆Honorable Mention: Best of ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) (2021)
• Personal grant for PhD studentship, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (2013 – 2017)
• 🏆Best Paper Award, Doctoral Consortium, 26th Int. Conf. on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems (2014)
• Personal grant for MSc, University of Minho and Portuguese Government (FCT) (2011 – 2012)
• MSc Merit Award (2011)