Latanya Sweeney, PhD is the Director and founder of the Data Privacy Lab at Harvard University. The Lab, formerly at Carnegie Mellon, works with real-world stakeholders to solve today's privacy technology problems. Dr. Sweeney, a Visiting Professor and Scholar at Harvard, previously a Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science, Technology and Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, was recently appointed to the Privacy and Security Seat of the Federal HIT Policy Committee, the group responsible for advising ONC on policy for the new national health information infrastructure. Dr. Sweeney's work involves creating technologies and related policies with provable guarantees of privacy protection while allowing society to collect and share person-specific information for many worthy purposes. She has made numerous discoveries related to identifiability and privacy technologies and she has had significant impact on American privacy policy. Her work has received awards from numerous organizations, including the American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Informatics Association, and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.
​Dr. Sweeney's work has appeared in hundreds of news articles, numerous academic papers, and was even cited in the original publication of the HIPAA Privacy Rule and the Health Breach Regulation. Companies have licensed and continue to use her privacy technologies. Dr. Sweeney received her PhD in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2001. Her undergraduate degree in computer science was completed at Harvard University where she graduated cum laude. More information about Dr. Sweeney is available at her website.