Institute scholar and software engineer develop digital resource on risks of online grooming

June 17, 2026

A practicing international human rights lawyer, Monalisa ’18 LLM has spent her career serving minors who are victims of sexual exploitation. Through a stint as practitioner in residence at the Institute for Social Concerns and the Notre Dame Initiative on Race and Resilience, Monalisa has expanded her efforts beyond representation to find ways to educate the public about the illicit sex trafficking industry. Now, through a partnership with Shreya Kumar, assistant teaching professor of computer science and engineering, she is utilizing digital technology to help children, parents, and teachers understand the risks of online grooming.

*Monalisa, second from right, with Shreya Kumar, second from left, on panel at the Global Catholic Social Tradition Network conference in Mumbai, India*

Together Monalisa, Kumar, and successive cohorts of Kumar’s engineering students designed a website that pairs data visualization with an interactive, research-based, decision-making learning experience. The platform simulates scenarios that children, parents, and teachers face online every day, showing the risks their choices can entail. Each answer selected generates information on how the action taken alleviates the situation or potentially makes it worse. By working through various scenarios, participants become better informed and equipped to make safe choices online or to intervene effectively when a child falls prey to online solicitation.

The partnership relies on Monalisa’s legal background to translate nuanced terms in case law for use in data analysis. “We got really lucky that we got a very engaged partner,” Kumar says of Monalisa. “We got to bother her with tons of questions and debate over several strategies of how to attack things.”

Monalisa and Kumar met as panelists for a session on technology and human dignity at the institute’s 2024 Global Catholic Social Tradition Network conference at St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai, India. After Monalisa presented on the connection between technology and trafficking, she and Kumar discussed an interdisciplinary collaboration that would draw on Monalisa’s research as a human rights lawyer and on Kumar’s expertise as a software engineer. Their goal was to create a tool to inform people about trafficking in ways that empower instead of simply horrifying them. They also wanted to cultivate empathy with victims by demonstrating how easy it is to fall prey to online predators in order to dispel the myths that trafficking is the fault of children or their parents.

“We need to see that sex trafficking is well-oiled machinery—a business that works very well,” Monalisa states. Sex trafficking has been a problem for millennia, but Monalisa observes that technology has “revolutionized it, made it much easier, and given it a capacity and reach that did not exist before.” Kumar notes that the threat has shifted entirely from the dark recesses of the internet right onto mainstream platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Fortnite chatrooms.

“We need to see that sex trafficking is well-oiled machinery—a business that works very well.”

– Monalisa ’18 LLM, international human rights lawyer and practitioner in residence

While serving as the institute’s inaugural practitioner in residence, Monalisa conducted database research facilitated through Notre Dame Law School, providing Kumar and her students data points from hundreds of cases in which defendants have been convicted of child abuse in which technology played a role. Using the data, Kumar’s students spent hours coding to create the decision-making learning experience that Monalisa and Kumar continued to refine.

Monalisa credits her residency at the institute for providing her the resources and connections she needed to address the problem of trafficking in new and innovative ways. “This is a multi-pronged problem that needs multi-pronged solutions,” she says.

While Monalisa’s residency is concluding, the cross-disciplinary work sparked by the residency will endure. Beyond the website, the partnership is expanding into a data analysis project that will provide evidence to counter common courtroom defense arguments. Additionally, Monalisa is designing resources to help hotel workers monitor trafficking trends under evolving state laws. Through these efforts, Monalisa exemplifies how cross-disciplinary research can translate legal data into scalable, accessible tools to educate the public and inform public policy.