At UMD, Vitak was appointed as director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Communities and Information in 2016, and simultaneously became associate director of the Human Computer Interaction Lab. She became the director of HCIL in 2021. Vitak has continued to study how new technologies can benefit and harm humans.[5] She studies the underlying motivations for people's behaviors, how humans perceive risks when they approach new technologies, and how policy makers can do more to convey critical information.[5]
Vitak's research has focused on networked privacy and data ethics, identifying the privacy risks of new communication technologies and developing tools, curricula, games, and other resources to increase children and adults' understanding of privacy and security.[6][7][8]