Cynthia Dwork, currently a distinguished scientist at Microsoft Research in Silicon Valley, will join the faculty at Harvard in January 2017. She will be the Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science at the Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) and also hold the Radcilffe Alumnae Professorship at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

At Microsoft since 2001, Dwork is a recognized theoretical computer scientist, known for placing privacy-preserving data analysis on a mathematically rigorous foundation. Addressing societal concerns, she has developed ways to analyze large sets of data while preserving the privacy of the individuals represented. Dwork holds two dozen U.S. and foreign patents and has published more than 100 refereed journal and conference papers. She is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Association for Computing Machinery.

Dwork received a BSE in electrical engineering and computer science from Princeton in 1979 and a Ph.D. in computer science from Cornell University in 1983. She is the daughter of the late Bernard Dwork, Eugene Higgins Professor of Mathematics, who taught at Princeton from 1964 until his status changed to emeritus in 1993.