Ed Felten, the Deputy U.S. Chief Technology Officer for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, will be this year's keynote speaker at Carnegie Mellon University's Privacy Day celebration on Thursday, Jan. 28.

"Ed is at the center of the privacy policy debate at a time when technology development and security imperatives are requiring society to ask itself some really tough questions," said Norman Sadeh, a professor in the School of Computer Science and co-director of Carnegie Mellon's Privacy Engineering program. "I could not think of a better keynote speaker for our Privacy Day event at CMU."

Felten will speak at 1:30 p.m. in the Rangos Ballroom of the Cohon University Center. His talk and other Privacy Day activities are open to the public. Learn more about the day's activities on the event website.

Data Privacy Day is an annual international effort that aims to empower and educate people to protect their privacy, control their digital footprint, and make the protection of their digital data and privacy a great priority in their lives.

While serving at the White House, Felten is on leave from Princeton University, where he is a professor of computer science and public affairs and the director of the Center for Information Technology Policy, a cross-disciplinary effort studying digital technologies in public life.

This isn't the first time Felten has been on leave from his Princeton appointment for civil service. From 2011 to 2012, he served as the first chief technologist at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Felten's research interests include computer security and privacy and public policy issues relating to information technology. Specific topics include software security, Internet security, electronic voting, cybersecurity policy, technology for government transparency, network neutrality and Internet policy.

Following the keynote speech, Felten will join in a panel discussion with Sadeh, computer science and engineering and public policy professor Lorrie Cranor, and information technology and public policy professor Alessandro Acquisti.