Cynthia Dwork
The Donald E. Knuth Prize is awarded yearly for outstanding contributions to the foundations of computer science over an extended period of time. This year the Donald E. Knuth Prize will be awarded to former Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Council member Cynthia Dwork of Harvard University for fundamental and lasting contributions to computer science.
From the announcement:
“Dwork is one of the most influential theoretical computer scientists of her generation. Her research has transformed several fields, most notably distributed systems, cryptography, and data privacy, and her current work promises to add fairness in algorithmic decision making to the list. She is widely known for the introduction and development of dierential privacy, and for her work on nonmalleability, lattice-based encryption, concurrent composition, and proofs of work. She also did foundational work in many other areas including in distributed systems with her work on consensus, and in algorithmic fairness with her work on the formalization of the “treat like alike” principle. A striking feature of Dwork’s work is her willingness and ability to tackle big, important problems. Two examples stand out: her work on cryptography in a network environment, and her work on privacy.”
The 2020 Prize will be presented at FOCS 2020 to be held in Durham NC, USA, November 17-19. The Prize includes a $10,000 award and a $1,000 travel stipend (for travel to the award ceremony). Congrats, Cynthia!
