Alessandro Acquisti

Alessandro Acquisti is a Professor of Information Technology and Public Policy at the Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and an Andrew Carnegie Fellow (inaugural class). He is the director of the Peex (Privacy Economics Experiments) lab at CMU and the co-director of CMU CBDR (Center for Behavioral and Decision Research). Alessandro investigates the economics of privacy. His studies have spearheaded the investigation of privacy and disclosure behavior in online social networks, and the application of behavioral economics to the study of privacy and information security decision making. Alessandro’s studies have been published in journals across several disciplines (including Science, Journal of Economic Literature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Management Science, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, Information Systems Research, Journal of Comparative Economics, ACM Transactions, and so forth), as well as edited books, conference proceedings, and numerous keynotes. Alessandro’s findings have been featured in national and international media outlets, including the Economist, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, Wired.com, NPR, CNN, and 60 Minutes. His 2009 study on the predictability of Social Security numbers was featured in the “Year in Ideas” issue of the NYT Magazine (the SSNs assignment scheme was changed by the US Social Security Administration in 2011). Alessandro holds a PhD from UC Berkeley, and Master degrees from UC Berkeley, the London School of Economics, and Trinity College Dublin.