PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Daniel Kifer

Also known as Dan Kifer

Daniel Kifer is a Penn State computer scientist whose work spans data mining, machine learning and data privacy. At Cornell, he coauthored DualMiner in 2002 and l-diversity in 2006, earned his computer science PhD, and completed a postdoc before joining Yahoo Research in 2007 and Penn State in 2008. He shared the 2018 ACM CCS Outstanding Paper Award for a technique to find differential-privacy violations. His later work includes a 2020 guide to implementing and auditing differential privacy, 2021 testing methods and work on the 2020 Census privacy system, and a 2022 paper interpreting Census privacy guarantees. As of October 2026, he is a Penn State professor whose recent collaborations include transfer learning for materials prediction and research on landslide susceptibility.

Works
229
Citations
15,468
h-index
46
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 2002

    Mining constrained itemsets

    At Cornell, he coauthors DualMiner, a dual-pruning algorithm for itemsets with constraints, in 2002. His interests include data mining, data privacy, statistics and machine learning.

  2. 2006

    l-Diversity at Cornell

    In April 2006, he coauthors l-Diversity: Privacy Beyond k-Anonymity with Ashwin Machanavajjhala, Johannes Gehrke and Muthuramakrishnan Venkitasubramaniam.

  3. 2006–2007

    A Cornell PhD and postdoc

    He earns a computer science PhD from Cornell University in August 2006 and holds a postdoctoral position there from September 2006 to August 2007.

  4. 2007–2008

    Yahoo! Research to Penn State

    He joins Yahoo! Research for a year in fall 2007, then starts as an assistant professor in Penn State's Department of Computer Science and Engineering in fall 2008.

  5. 2018

    Detecting privacy violations

    At CCS 2018, he shares the Outstanding Paper Award with Danfeng Zhang for “Toward Detecting Violations of Differential Privacy.” Their technique helps developers identify privacy violations and explore where algorithm variations break down.

  6. 2020–2021

    Auditing differential privacy

    In 2020, he coauthors Guidelines for Implementing and Auditing Differentially Private Systems, a guide to platform practices, specialized testing and privacy audits. In June 2021, he writes about repeated input/output checks for finding privacy bugs and works with the Census Bureau on the disclosure avoidance system for the 2020 Decennial Census.

  7. September 2022

    Interpreting Census guarantees

    In September 2022, he coauthors a Census Bureau working paper interpreting differential privacy variants, privacy-loss accounting, and frequentist and Bayesian semantics for the 2020 Census redistricting data.

  8. As of October 2026

    Professor and transfer learning

    In January 2026, he coauthors a transfer-learning study on porosity prediction for additively manufactured metallic components. His 2025 collaborations include work on landslide susceptibility and physics-informed ultrasound evaluation. He is a professor of computer science and engineering at Penn State.

Career

  1. Since 2008Pennsylvania State UniversityAssistant Professor
  2. 2018–2025United States Department of Commerce
  3. 2007–2008Yahoo
  4. 2006–2007Cornell UniversityPostdoctoral Researcher

Education

  1. 2006Cornell UniversityPhD

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

  1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Daniel Kifer. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  2. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Pennsylvania State University. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  3. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Pennsylvania State University. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  4. 11% of AI doctorate holders from 2010 to 2016 founded or led a company or lab by 10 years after graduationIncludes Cornell University. We estimate how often AI doctorate holders founded or led a company or lab by 10 years after graduation, how waiting times compare between founders and top jobs, and which universities trained the most.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. Dan's Homepage cs.cornell.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. NESCAI: North East Student Colloquium on Artificial Intelligence cs.cornell.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Kifer, Zhang receive Outstanding Paper Award | Penn State Engineering eecs.psu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. [2002.04049] Guidelines for Implementing and Auditing Differentially Private Systems arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Testing for Differential Privacy Bugs | NIST nist.gov. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Bayesian and Frequentist Semantics for Common Variations of Differential Privacy: Applications to the 2020 Census census.gov. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Daniel Kifer - Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences huck.psu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. CAFE | Faculty | Penn State Engineering cafe.psu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.