Cathy O'Neil

Catherine ("Cathy") Helen O'Neil is an American mathematician and the author of the blog mathbabe.org and several books on data science, including Weapons of Math DestructionShe was the former Director of the Lede Program in Data Practices at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism's Tow Center and was employed as Data Science Consultant at Johnson Research Labs.

She lives in New York City and was active in the Occupy movement.

O'Neil attended UC Berkeley as an undergraduate, received a Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard University in 1999, and afterward held positions in the mathematics departments of MIT and Barnard College, doing research in arithmetic algebraic geometry.She left academia in 2007, and worked for four years in the finance industry, including two years at the hedge fund D. E. Shaw.After becoming disenchanted with the world of finance, O'Neil became involved with the Occupy Wall Street movement, participating in its Alternative Banking Group. In 2016, her book Weapons of Math Destruction was published and long-listed for the National Book Award for Nonfiction.

She founded O'Neil Risk Consulting & Algorithmic Auditing, which "helps companies and organizations manage and audit their algorithmic risks."

In 1993 O'Neil was awarded the Alice T. Schafer Prize from the Association for Women in Mathematics and in 2019 she won the MAA's Euler Book Prize for her book Weapons of Math Destruction.

O'Neil lives in New York City with her husband Aise Johan de Jong and their three sons.