A lecture Tuesday evening concerning big data, a topic of relative importance, started off lightly. 

“If you expected Katy Perry here tonight, you might be disappointed, and I’m not Bernie Sanders,” said Stephen Fienberg, professor of statistics at Carnegie Mellon University, to begin his lecture on big data and security.

Fienberg’s lecture, “Privacy and Confidentiality in an Era of Big Data” is the first event during the two-day conference for the Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence housed this year at Iowa State.

Over a hundred students, faculty and researchers attended the kickoff event. Many ISU students of different backgrounds were present, including Kelvin Williams, freshman in computer science.

“I want to learn how to securely work with a lot of data,” Williams said in reference to why he attended the lecture.

Computer science students weren’t the only students in attendance. Anne Cramond, junior in supply chain management, attended to learn about how to avoid security issues entirely.

“I’m hoping he teaches us how to be more proactive instead of reactive,” Cramond said before the lecture.

Professor Fienberg covered in great detail some of the problems with big data today. One example he pointed out was the 2014 Iowa State leak of almost 29,780 student’s social security numbers.

Fienberg is one of the many researchers working on making big data a secure database for ethical research.

“I have been worried about confidentially for a couple of decades,” Fienberg said.

He’s also proud to be part of a unique department at Carnegie Mellon.

“Carnegie Mellon has the first, and I say first because I hope there will be more, machine learning departments in the world,” Fienberg said.

The department focuses on statistical data mining, a way to use big data to help society.

Williams said he learned a lot from the lecture, adding that he can use what he heard from Feinberg in practice. 

“I believe I can take the information I’ve learned here to make security my top priority in my future projects,” Williams said.