Alessandro Acquisti
Trustee Professor of Information Technology and Public Policy, Heinz College
Alessandro Acquisti is a professor of information technology and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College, the co-director of the CMU Center for Behavioral Decision Research (CBDR) and a member of the Carnegie Mellon CyLab, and the CyLab Usability, Privacy, and Security (CUPS) lab.
His research combines economics, decision research, and data mining to investigate the role of privacy in a digital society. His studies have spearheaded the economic analysis of privacy, the application of behavioral economics to the understanding of consumer privacy valuations and decision-making, and the investigation of privacy and personal disclosures in online social networks.
Acquisti’s work has been published in several journals, including Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, and Journal of Economic Literature. His research has been featured in media outlets around the world, including The Economist, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. In a previous life, he has been a soundtrack composer and a motorcycle racer (USGPRU).
Education
2003 Ph.D., Information Management and Systems, UC Berkeley
2001 M.I.M.S., Information Management and Systems, UC Berkeley
1999 M.Sc., Econometrics and Mathematical Economics, London School of Economics
1999 M.Litt., Economics, Trinity College Dublin
Affiliations
Media mentions
CyLab Security and Privacy Institute
CyLab researchers present at ACM CHI 2025
CyLab Security and Privacy Institute researchers will present nine papers and teach one course at the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2025).
CyLab Security and Privacy Institute
Bryan Parno honored with the IEEE Cybersecurity Award for Practice
Bryan Parno, Kavčić-Moura Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Professor of Computer Science, has received the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Cybersecurity Award for Practice for his contributions to the theory and practice of end-to-end secure systems.
CyLab Security and Privacy Institute
NIST awards $6M to Carnegie Mellon University to establish AI Cooperative Research Center
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo announced Sept. 24 that the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has awarded $6 million to Carnegie Mellon University to establish a joint center to support cooperative research and experimentation for the test and evaluation of modern AI capabilities and tools.
CyLab Security and Privacy Institute
CyLab hosts top cybersecurity researchers for the 2024 NSF SaTC PI Meeting
On Sept. 4-5, more than 500 of the world’s leading cyber-systems researchers convened in Pittsburgh for the 2024 National Science Foundation Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace Principal Investigators’ Meeting (NSF SaTC PI), hosted by Carnegie Mellon University’s CyLab Security and Privacy Institute.
CyLab Security and Privacy Institute
CyLab icon connects users with online privacy choices
Have you noticed the new icon popping up on websites across the Internet? Thanks to researchers at Carnegie Mellon’s CyLab Security and Privacy Institute, the University of Michigan, and Fordham University, users can now easily make choices about how websites use their personal information, all in one convenient spot.
CyLab Security and Privacy Institute
CyLab members present research at annual FTC PrivacyCon
CyLab faculty, postdocs, and students presented their research at the FTC’s seventh annual PrivacyCon on November 1.
CyLab Security and Privacy Institute
CyLab well represented at SOUPS 2022
There is no shortage of Carnegie Mellon (CMU) students and faculty participating in this year's Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS).
CyLab Security and Privacy Institute
“Adulting” for cybersecurity, GANs, and more: CyLab’s 2022 seed funding awardees
Over $400K in seed funding has been awarded to 18 different faculty and staff across seven departments at Carnegie Mellon to support security and privacy research.
CyLab Security and Privacy Institute
Understanding the evolutionary roots of privacy
New research co-authored by CyLab researchers in the journal Science explores the concept of privacy not as a modern anomaly, but as a concept that spans time and space, social class, and degree of technological sophistication.
The Wall Street Journal
Acquisti quoted on facial recognition
CyLab’s Alessandro Acquisti was quoted in The Wall Street Journal on privacy concerns about facial recognition and Facebook’s announcement that it is shutting down its facial-recognition system in the coming weeks.
CyLab Security and Privacy Institute
Are the recent Facebook revelations a “privacy Chernobyl?”
CyLab’s Alessandro Acquisti shares his thoughts around the privacy issues Facebook is facing today.
CyLab Security and Privacy Institute
Misconceptions plague security and privacy tools
According to a new study out of CyLab, people hold a myriad of misconceptions about the security and privacy tools out there meant to help protect our privacy and online security.