Previously, he was a Senior Research Scientist in the Knowledge Management group at Yahoo! Research. His primary research interests lie in algorithms for ensuring privacy in statistical databases and augmented reality applications. He is a recipient of the National Science Foundation Faculty Early CAREER award in 2013 and the 2008 Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Management of Data (ACM SIGMOD) Jim Gray Dissertation Award Honorable Mention. Dr. Machanavajjhala graduated with a Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University and a B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.