Cynthia Dwork (born June 27, 1958) is an American computer scientist well-known for her work in cryptography, distributed computing, and fairness in computer algorithms. She helped create differential privacy and proof-of-work.

She works at Harvard University. There, she holds the title of Gordon McKay Professor in Computer Science, is a Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and is affiliated with Harvard Law School and the Department of Statistics at Harvard.

Early life and education

Dwork earned a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from Princeton University in 1979. She graduated with honors, receiving the Charles Ira Young Award for Excellence in Independent Research. In 1983, she earned her Ph.D. from Cornell University. Her research was guided by John Hopcroft.

Career and research

Cynthia Dwork is known for her research that creates strong and clear rules for analyzing data while protecting people's privacy. She helped develop a method called differential privacy in the early to mid-2000s. This method ensures that results from data analysis are hard to trace back to any single person, even if they contributed their data. This is often done by adding small amounts of random changes, or "noise," to the data or the results of calculations. She also studies fairness in algorithms, such as those used to place online ads, using a method that looks at how systems work. Dwork has made important contributions to cryptography and distributed computing. She received the Edsger W. Dijkstra Prize for her early work on the rules for systems that can keep working even when some parts fail.

In cryptography, Dwork worked with others to create non-malleable cryptography in 1991. She also helped develop the first lattice-based cryptosystem in 1997 with Miklós Ajtai. This system was the first public-key encryption method where breaking a random example is as hard as solving the most difficult version of the mathematical problem it is based on. With Moni Naor, she introduced the idea of requiring proof of computational effort to stop email spam. This idea, called proof-of-work, is a key part of technologies like hashcash and bitcoin.

Selected works

Her published works include:

• Dwork, Cynthia; Lynch, Nancy; Stockmeyer, Larry (1988). "Consensus in the presence of partial synchrony." Journal of the ACM, 35(2): 288–323. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.13.3423. doi: 10.1145/42282.42283. S2CID 17007235. This paper received the Dijkstra Prize in 2007.
• Dwork, Cynthia; Roth, Aaron (2014). The Algorithmic Foundations of Differential Privacy (PDF). Foundations and Trends in Theoretical Computer Science. Now Publishers. ISBN 978-1601988188.

Awards and honors

She was chosen as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) in 2008, as a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2008, as a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2014, as a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in 2015, and as a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2016.

Dwork received many awards for her work.

• In 2007, she received her first test-of-time award, the Dijkstra Prize, for her work on consensus problems with Nancy Lynch and Larry Stockmeyer.
• In 2009, she won the PET Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies.
• In 2016, both the International Association for Cryptologic Research 2016 TCC Test-of-Time Award and the 2017 Gödel Prize were given to Cynthia Dwork, Frank McSherry, Kobbi Nissim, and Adam D. Smith for their important 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.
• 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.
• In 2025, Dwork was a recipient of the National Medal of Science.
• In 2026, she was awarded the Japan Prize in the field of "Electronics and Communication."

Personal life

Dwork is the daughter of American mathematician Bernard Dwork and the sister of historian Debórah Dwork. She has a black belt in taekwondo.