Latanya Arvette Sweeney
Personal Information
Born: unknown
Country of Birth: USA
Nationality: USA
Ethnicity: Black
Education
Harvard University Extension School ALB Computer Science 1995; MIT SM Electrical Engineering & Computer Science 1997 PhD Computer Science 2001
Professional Life
Field of Study: Computer Science
Institution/Corporation: Harvard University; Carnegie Mellon University
Degrees & Memberships: Member: American College of Medical Informatics (2006)
Awards & Achievements
Awards: Louis D. Brandeis Privacy Award; Privacy Advocacy Award American Psychiatric Association
Achievements: computer scientist best known for work onák-anonymity; former CTO US Federal Trade Commission (FTC); pioneer in the field of data privacy; launched algorithmic fairness; founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Technology Science
Credited with the observation that "87% of the US population is uniquely identified by date of birth, gender, & postal code"
Her best known academic work is on the theory of k-anonymity
1st African-American woman awarded a PhD in computer science from MIT
Demonstrated that a medical dataset in the public domain can be used to identify individuals regardless the removal of all explicit identifiers when the medical dataset was combined with a public voter list
Since 2011 her lab at Harvard has been conducting research on data privacy
Her research results greatly impacted HIPPA regulations
Holds 3 patents