Ralph Gross is a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) with research spanning privacy, face recognition, and statistical re-identification. He is co-author of Acquisti and Gross (2009), the landmark study demonstrating that Social Security numbers (SSNs) issued under the Enumeration at Birth (EAB) scheme can be predicted from publicly available birth data and the Death Master File (DMF) — a finding that directly prompted SSA to fully randomize SSN assignment in 2011.