Latanya Sweeney

Latanya Sweeney is the Daniel Paul Professor of the Practice of Government and Technology at the Harvard Kennedy School and in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Her mission: to create and use technology to assess and solve societal, political and governance problems, and to teach others how to do the same. The scientific study of technology's impact on humankind is termed technology science and she is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Technology Science, the Faculty Chair of the Tech Science Program in Government, and the Director of the Public Interest Tech Lab at Harvard.

Sweeney, also the founding Director of the Data Privacy Lab at Harvard, has three patents, more than 100 academic publications, pioneered the field known as data privacy, launched the emerging area known as algorithmic fairness, and was first to present technology challenges in U.S. elections. Her work is explicitly cited in two U.S. regulations, including the U.S. federal medical privacy regulation (known as HIPAA).

She was formerly the Chief Technology Officer at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and a Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science, Technology and Policy at Carnegie Mellon University.

Sweeney is a recipient of the prestigious Louis D. Brandeis Privacy Award, the American Psychiatric Association's Privacy Advocacy Award, an elected fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics, and has testified before government bodies worldwide. She earned her PhD in computer science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- the first Black woman to do so -- and her undergraduate degree in computer science from Harvard University.