Dawn Song

Dawn Song is a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, specializing in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and decentralized technology. Song serves as co-director of the Berkeley Center for Responsible Decentralized Intelligence. Her research encompasses AI safety and security, agentic AI, deep learning, privacy, and decentralization technology. Before joining Berkeley, Song was an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University.

Song has been recognized as the most cited scholar in computer security through the AMiner Award. She is the recipient of several honors, including the MacArthur Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, Schmidt Sciences AI2050 Senior Fellow, NSF CAREER Award, Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, MIT Technology Review TR-35 Award, ACM SIGSAC Outstanding Innovation Award, and more than 10 Test-of-Time Awards and Best Paper Awards from leading conferences in computer security and deep learning. Song is an ACM Fellow, IEEE Fellow, and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In addition to her academic work, Song has contributed to the field through applied research and entrepreneurship. She created BitBlaze, a tool used to analyze and address security issues, which was later adopted in Google Chrome. As a serial entrepreneur, Song co-founded Ensighta Security, acquired by FireEye Inc., and Menlo Security. She also co-founded Oasis Labs, a company leveraging blockchain to enhance privacy, data control, and security in cloud applications. Her entrepreneurial efforts have been recognized by Inc. Magazine's Female Founder 100 List and the Wired25 List of Innovators.

Song has played a role in shaping AI and cybersecurity policy, including participation in the DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge, where her team was among the top seven finalists. Her research addresses safety in multi-agent systems through theoretical, systematic, and empirical approaches, such as game theory, representation engineering, and multi-agent simulations. Song has organized the Agentic AI Summit at UC Berkeley, which has drawn significant in-person and online audiences. She is frequently invited to speak on topics related to responsible AI development, privacy, and decentralized systems.