Cynthia Dwork (born June 27, 1958) is an American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

, where she is Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science, Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at the

Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University—also known as the Harvard Radcliffe Institute—is a part of Harvard University that fosters interdisciplinary research across the humanities, sciences, social sciences, arts, a ...

, and Affiliated Professor,

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each class ...

and Harvard's Department of Statistics. Dwork was elected a member of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy ...

in 2008 for fundamental contributions to distributed algorithms and the security of cryptosystems. She is a distinguished scientist at

Microsoft Research Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research subsidiary of Microsoft. It was created in 1991 by Richard Rashid, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold with the intent to advance state-of-the-art computing and solve difficult world problems through technologi ...

Early life and education

Dwork received her B.S.E. from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

in 1979, graduating Cum Laude, and receiving the Charles Ira Young Award for Excellence in Independent Research. Dwork received her Ph.D. from

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

in 1983 for research supervised by

John Hopcroft John Edward Hopcroft (born October 7, 1939) is an American theoretical computer scientist. His textbooks on theory of computation (also known as the Cinderella book) and data structures are regarded as standards in their fields. He is the IBM P ...

Career and research

Dwork is known for her research placing privacy-preserving data analysis on a mathematically rigorous foundation, including the co-invention of

differential privacy Differential privacy (DP) is a system for publicly sharing information about a dataset by describing the patterns of groups within the dataset while withholding information about individuals in the dataset. The idea behind differential privacy is t ...

, a strong privacy guarantee frequently permitting highly accurate data analysis (with Frank McSherry, Kobbi Nissim, and

Adam D. Smith Adam D. Smith is a computer scientist at Boston University, where he is a founding member of the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences. His areas of research include cryptography and information privacy. He is known, along with Cynthia Dwork, Fran ...

, 2006). The definition of differential privacy relies on the notion of indistinguishability of the outputs irrespective of whether an individual has contributed their data or not. This is typically achieved by adding small amounts of noise either to the input data or to outputs of computations performed on the data. She uses a systems-based approach to studying fairness in algorithms including those used for placing ads. Dwork has also made contributions in

cryptography Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adver ...

and

distributed computing A distributed system is a system whose components are located on different computer network, networked computers, which communicate and coordinate their actions by message passing, passing messages to one another from any system. Distributed com ...

, and is a recipient of the

Edsger W. Dijkstra Prize The Edsger W. Dijkstra Paper Prize in Distributed Computing is given for outstanding papers on the principles of distributed computing, whose significance and impact on the theory and/or practice of distributed computing has been evident for at lea ...

for her early work on the foundations of

fault-tolerant system Fault tolerance is the property that enables a system to continue operating properly in the event of the failure of one or more faults within some of its components. If its operating quality decreases at all, the decrease is proportional to the ...

s. Her contributions in cryptography include non-malleable cryptography with Danny Dolev and

Moni Naor Moni Naor ( he, מוני נאור) is an Israeli computer scientist, currently a professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Naor received his Ph.D. in 1989 at the University of California, Berkeley. His advisor was Manuel Blum. He works i ...

in 1991, the first lattice-based cryptosystem with

Miklós Ajtai Miklós Ajtai (born 2 July 1946) is a computer scientist at the IBM Almaden Research Center, United States. In 2003, he received the Knuth Prize for his numerous contributions to the field, including a classic sorting network algorithm (deve ...

in 1997, which was also the first

public-key cryptosystem Public-key cryptography, or asymmetric cryptography, is the field of cryptographic systems that use pairs of related keys. Each key pair consists of a public key and a corresponding private key. Key pairs are generated with cryptographic alg ...

for which breaking a random instance is as hard as solving the hardest instance of the underlying mathematical problem ("worst-case/average-case equivalence"). With Naor she also first presented the idea of, and a technique for, combating

e-mail spam Email spam, also referred to as junk email, spam mail, or simply spam, is unsolicited messages sent in bulk by email (spamming). The name comes from a Monty Python sketch in which the name of the canned pork product Spam is ubiquitous, unavoida ...

by requiring a proof of computational effort, also known as

proof-of-work Proof of work (PoW) is a form of cryptographic proof in which one party (the ''prover'') proves to others (the ''verifiers'') that a certain amount of a specific computational effort has been expended. Verifiers can subsequently confirm this expe ...

— a key technology underlying

hashcash Hashcash is a proof-of-work system used to limit email spam and denial-of-service attacks, and more recently has become known for its use in bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies) as part of the mining algorithm. Hashcash was proposed in 1997 by Adam ...

and

bitcoin Bitcoin ( abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public distr ...

Selected works

Her publications include: * — this paper received the

Dijkstra Prize The Edsger W. Dijkstra Paper Prize in Distributed Computing is given for outstanding papers on the principles of distributed computing, whose significance and impact on the theory and/or practice of distributed computing has been evident for at lea ...

in 2007. *

Awards and honors

She was elected as a Fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

(AAAS) in 2008, as a member of the

in 2008, as a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

in 2014, as a

fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

of the

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional member ...

(ACM) in 2015, and as a member of the

American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

in 2016. Dwork received a number of awards for her work. * In 2007, she received her first test-of-time, the

, for her work on consensus problems together with Nancy Lynch and

Larry Stockmeyer Larry Joseph Stockmeyer (1948 – 31 July 2004) was an American computer scientist. He was one of the pioneers in the field of computational complexity theory, and he also worked in the field of distributed computing. He died of pancreatic can ...

. * In 2009, she won the PET Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies. * In 2016, both the

International Association for Cryptologic Research International is an adjective (also used as a noun) meaning "between nations". International may also refer to: Music Albums * ''International'' (Kevin Michael album), 2011 * ''International'' (New Order album), 2002 * ''International'' (The T ...

2016 TCC Test-of-Time Award and the 2017

Gödel Prize The Gödel Prize is an annual prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science, given jointly by the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) and the Association for Computing Machinery Special Inter ...

were awarded to Cynthia Dwork, Frank McSherry, Kobbi Nissim and

for their seminal paper that introduced differential privacy. * In 2020, she received the IEEE Richard W. Hamming Medal for "foundational work in privacy, cryptography, and distributed computing, and for leadership in developing differential privacy." * She is the 2020 winner of the

Knuth Prize The Donald E. Knuth Prize is a prize for outstanding contributions to the foundations of computer science, named after the American computer scientist Donald E. Knuth. History The Knuth Prize has been awarded since 1996 and includes an award of U ...

. * She is a co-winner of the 2021 ACM Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award for her and her co-authors' "fundamental contributions to the development of differential privacy". * She is co-winner of the 2022 RSA Award for Excellence in Mathematics for "contributions to the foundation of privacy and to the foundations of cryptography". * In 2022, her 1991 STOC paper, with Dolev and Naor, “Non-Malleable Cryptography,” won a STOC 30-year Test-of Time award.

Personal life

Dwork is the daughter of American mathematician

Bernard Dwork Bernard Morris Dwork (May 27, 1923 – May 9, 1998) was an American mathematician, known for his application of ''p''-adic analysis to local zeta functions, and in particular for a proof of the first part of the Weil conjectures: the rationality ...

, and sister of historian

Debórah Dwork Debórah Dwork is an American historian, specializing in the history of the Holocaust. She is the Founding Director of the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and formerly served as the Rose Professor of Holocaust History at Clark ...

. She has a black belt in

taekwondo ''Taekwondo'', ''Tae Kwon Do'' or ''Taekwon-Do'' (; ko, 태권도/跆拳道 ) is a Korean form of martial arts involving punching and kicking techniques, with emphasis on head-height kicks, spinning jump kicks, and fast kicking techniques. T ...

Early life and education

Career and research

Selected works

Awards and honors

Personal life

References

Further reading