Alex Berke

I'm currently a research scientist at Google, focused on privacy enhancing technologies.

PhD research

I received my PhD from MIT, advised by Kent Larson in the MIT Media Lab's City Science group.
My thesis committee included Latanya Sweeney and Sandy Pentland.

Who benefits from the data we unavoidably generate in our digitized economies - companies or communities?

My thesis work integrates computational privacy and social science research, and repurposes commercial surveillance data to help empower the communities from whom data are collected. I've done this by developing data crowdsourcing tools, analyzing privacy risks, designing privacy enhancing technology, and leveraging these data for computational social science. My focus is on the digital traces we unavoidably generate, such as mobile phone location data, web browsing data, and purchase histories.

Beyond my thesis, my PhD work is interdisciplinary, spanning behavioral economics, cryptography, sustainability and transportation.

Before graduate school I gained years of industry experience, working as an engineer at the intersection of technology and social impact.