studies technology–society clashes—what happens when powerful technologies collide with society. Her work identifies the resulting risks and develops practical ways to harmonize technology with society, so people can realize the benefits of innovation without having to accept their harms.
Diagnose the Clash
What technology products are colliding with society?
Identify the Risk
Who is at risk of harm, and what is the nature and extent of that harm?
Design the Response
What product, business, policy, legal, or market changes will eliminate the harm?
Selected Publications
Tech@FTC
Essays and Op-Eds
Accomplishments
News
Personal
Dr. Latanya Sweeney studies what happens when powerful technologies collide with society—and what we can do about it. Her work identifies these technology–society clashes, determines who is affected and how, and develops technical, legal, policy, and institutional responses that enable society to realize the benefits of technological innovation while protecting privacy, civil rights, democratic values, and human dignity.
She is Professor Emerita of the Practice of Government and Technology at Harvard University, founder and President of the Techizen Institute, President of the Patient Privacy Rights Foundation, and founding Editor-in-Chief of Technology Science.
Dr. Sweeney's earliest work focused on privacy. Her research demonstrated how seemingly anonymous data could be linked to other information to identify individuals, helping establish data privacy as a field of study and changing how governments, researchers, and companies think about anonymous data. She later conducted pioneering experiments documenting discrimination in online algorithms, helping launch the area now known as algorithmic fairness. Her work with Ji Su Yoo and Jinyan Zang was also the first to document vulnerabilities in voter-information websites during the 2016 U.S. election.
Her work has repeatedly moved between discovering problems and building solutions. She has designed technologies, conducted real-world experiments, influenced law and policy, and created institutions to address the consequences of technological change. Her research is explicitly cited in two U.S. regulations, including the federal medical privacy regulation known as HIPAA.
Dr. Sweeney also brought this approach directly into government as Chief Technology Officer at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. The experience deepened her understanding of the challenges institutions face when technologies change faster than the laws, policies, and practices intended to govern them. Throughout her career, she has worked to bring researchers, students, technologists, policymakers, businesses, and communities together to develop practical responses to these challenges.
After decades at Harvard, where she founded the Data Privacy Lab and the Public Interest Tech Lab and served for ten years as Faculty Dean of Currier House, Dr. Sweeney transitioned the Public Interest Tech Lab into the independent nonprofit Techizen Institute. The move created a platform for taking this work beyond the university and applying it more directly in the world.
Today, her work focuses increasingly on one of society's most consequential technology–society clashes: artificial intelligence. Through the Techizen Institute, she is developing new approaches for harmonizing AI and other emerging technologies with society—so that technological progress can improve people's lives without requiring society to accept preventable harms as the price of innovation.