Yaniv Erlich

Yaniv Erlich is a leading expert in genetics, data, and privacy. He is a professor at Columbia University and the Chief Science Officer at MyHeritage, a major genealogy company. He is known for his groundbreaking work at the intersection of DNA and data, exploring how genetic information can be used and what it means for our privacy. Yaniv, who has been referred to as the “Genome Hacker,” gained widespread attention for his research, which demonstrated how easy it can be to identify people from supposedly anonymous DNA data. For example, he and his team showed that by using online searches and a person’s Y chromosome, they could identify male research participants. Later, his work revealed that 60% of Americans of European descent could be identified using open genetic databases. This finding was named one of the top scientific breakthroughs of 2018 by Science magazine. In addition to his privacy work, Yaniv also created the world’s largest family tree, which contains 13 million people, and developed DNA.land, a website that helps people learn about their ancestry. His work has also included research into using DNA as a way to store massive amounts of digital data, reaching a density of 215 petabytes per gram of DNA.