Prof. Alex Paul Pentland
Toshiba Professor of Media, Arts, and Sciences
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
http://www.media.mit.edu/~pentland

Biography

Professor Alex (“Sandy”) Pentland is a pioneer in organizational engineering, mobile information systems, and computational social science. Sandy's focus is the development of human-centered technology, and the creation of ventures that take this technology into the real world. Sandy's focus is the development of human-centered technology, and the creation of ventures that take this technology into the real world.

He directs the Digital Life Consortium within the MIT Media Laboratory, a group of more than twenty multinational corporations exploring new ways to innovate, and is Faculty Sponsor of MIT’s Next Billion Network and the EPROM entrepreneurship program in Africa. He is among the most-cited computer scientists in the world, and in 1997 Newsweek magazine named him one of the 100 Americans likely to shape this century.

Education

University of Michigan, B.G.S. June 1976
M.I.T., Ph.D., June 1982

Professional Experience:

M.I.T., Media Arts and Sciences, Civil and Environmental Eng., Sloan School of Business, 1987-present
University of Rochester, Electrical Engineering, Center for Future Health, 1998-2001
Fairchild AI Center, Senior Computer Scientist, 1984-1985
Stanford University, Industrial Lecturer, 1983-1987
Stanford University, Visiting Professor, 1982-1983
SRI International, AI Center, Senior Computer Scientist, 1982 -1987

Spin-off Companies

Sense Networks
Cogito Health
CellBazaar
Way Systems

Dimagi
Way Systems
United Villages
Virage (merged with Autonomy AUTNF.PK)

Vivo (merged with RealNetworks NYNEX:RNWK)
Viisage (now NYSE:ID)

Institutions Founded or Co-Founded

Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship, MIT

Center for Future Health, University of Rochester Strong Hospital

Media Lab Asia, New Delhi

IEEE Autonomous Mental Development TC

IEEE Wearable Information Systems TC

IEEE Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition

Awards Received

Reality Mining: 10 Technologies That Will Change The Way We Live, Technology Review 2008
Carlos Ghosn Award for Automotive Design 2008

Future Health Technology Award, for `Honest Signals’ Health Assessments 2008

Idea of the Year, USA Today, for `Memory Glasses’ 2006

Ars Electronica’s `Digital Communities’ Award, 2004

Most Visionary Technology, MIT Enterprise Forum, 2003

The Tech Museum Award for Equality, LINCOS Project, 2001

Alcatel Science and Technology Award, LINCOS (Little Intelligent Communities), 2001
Jean Pierre Devijver Prize for Best Paper, Intl. Asso. Pattern Recognition, 2001

Senior Fellow, Design Futures Council, 2000
Most Influential Paper of Decade Award, Intl. Asso. Pattern Recognition, 2000

The Century Club (100 people to watch in the next century), Newsweek, 1997
Best Paper Prize, Institute of Elec. and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) 1991
Best Paper Prize, American Asso. Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) 1984

Selected And Recent Scientific Publications

Pentland, A., (2007) Automatic Mapping of Human Networks, Physica A doi:10.1016 j.physa.2006.11.046

Eagle, N., and Pentland, A., (2005) Social Serendipity: Mobilizing Social Software, IEEE Pervasive, Vo. 4, No. 2, pp. 28-34

Pentland, A., (2005) Socially Aware Computation and Communication, IEEE Computer, March 2005, pp. 63-70

Pentland, A., Choudhury, T., Eagle, N., and Singh, P. (2004), Human Dynamics: Computation for Organizations, Pattern Recognition Letters, Vol 26, No. 4, pp. 503-511

Pentland, A., (2004) Learning Communities: Understanding Information Flow in Human Networks, BT Technology Journal, Oct. 2004 Vol 22, No. 4, pp. 62-70

Pentland, A., (2004) HealthWear: Medical Technology Becomes Wearable (2004) IEEE Computer,
May, 2004, 37(5), pp. 42-49

Pentland, A., Hassan, A., and Fletcher, R., (2004) DakNet: Rethinking Connectivity in Developing Nations, IEEE Computer, Jan, 2004 37(1), pp. 4-9

Kumar VS, Wentzell KJ, Mikkelsen T, Pentland A, Laffel LM. (2004) The DAILY (Daily Automated Intensive Log for Youth) Trial: A Wireless, Portable System to Improve Adherence and Glycemic Control in Youth with Diabetes. Diabetes Technol. Ther. 2004 Aug;6(4):445-53.

Roy, D., and Pentland, A., (2002) Learning words from sights and sounds: A computational model, Cognitive Science, 26 113-146.

Weng, J., McClelland, J., Pentland, A., Sporns, O., Stockman, I., Sur, M., Thelen, E.,  (2001) Automonous Mental Development by Robots and Animals,  Science, V291 No. 5504, Jan 26, 2001

Moghaddam, B., Nastar, C., and Pentland, A., (2001) A Bayesian Similarity Measure for Deformable Matching, Image and Vision Computing, 19(5) pp. 235-244 April 2001

Tan, H., and Pentland, A., (2001) A Sensing Chair using Pressure Distribution Sensors,
IEEE/ASME Trans. Mechatronics, Sept. 2001

Pentland, A., (2000) Looking at People: Sensing for Ubiquitous and Wearable Computing
IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 22(1), pp. 107-119, Jan. 2000.

Oliver, N., Rosario, B., and Pentland, A., (2000) A Bayesian Computer Vision System for Modeling Human Interaction, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 22(8), pp. 831-843

Sparacino, F., Davenport, G., and Pentland, A., (2000) Media in Performance: Interactive Spaces for Dance, Theatre, Circus, and Museum Exhibits, IBM Systems Journal, 39(3) Fall 2000

Pentland, Alex (2000), Perceptual intelligence, Communications of the ACM, 43(3) pp. 35-44

Pentland, A., and Liu, A., (1999) Modeling and Prediction of Human Behavior, Neural Computation, 11(1), pp. 229-242,  Jan 1999

Jebara, T., Azarbayejani, A., and Pentland, A., (1999) 3D Structure from 2D Motion, IEEE Signal Processing, 16(3) pp. 66-84 May 1999

Pentland, A., and Liu, A., (1998) Modeling and Prediction of Human Behavior, Neural Computation, 11(1), Dec 1998

Starner, T., and Pentland, A., (1998) Real-Time American Sign Language Recognition from Video Using Hidden Markov Models, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Vision,   Nov. 1998.

Pentland, A., (1997) Content-Based Indexing of Images and Video, The Royal Society Philosophical Transactions on Biological Sciences, Vol. 352, pp. 1283-1290.

Maes, P., Blumburg, B., Darrell, T., and Pentland, A. (1997) The ALIVE System: Wireless, Full-body Interaction with Autonomous Agents, in ACM Multimedia Systems, Special Issue on Multimedia and Multisensory Virtual Worlds, ACM Press, Volume 5, Issue 3, (summer 1997).

Moghaddam, B., Pentland, A., (1997), Probabalistic Visual Learning for Object Representation,
IEEE Trans. Pattern Analysis and Machine Vision, Vol. 19, No. 7, pp. 696-710.

Essa, I., Pentland, A., (1997), Coding, Analysis, Interpretation and Recognition of Facial Expressions,
IEEE Trans. Pattern Analysis and Machine Vision}, Vol. 19, No. 7, pp. 757-763

Starner, T., Mann, S., Rhodes, B., Levine, J., Healey, J., Kirsch, D., Picard, R., and Pentland, A., (1996) Augmented Reality Through Wearable Computing, Presence, Teleoperators and Virtual Environments (M.I.T. Press), special issue on augmented reality, Vol 5, No 2, pp. 163-172.

Pentland, A. (1996) Smart Rooms, Smart Clothes, Scientific American, Vol. 274, No. 4, pp. 68-76, April 1996.

Pentland, A., Picard, R., Sclaroff, S. (1996) Photobook: Tools for Content-Based Manipulation of Image Databases, in In'tl Journal of Computer Vision, Vol. 18, No. 3.,pp. 233-254

Azarbayejani, A. and Pentland, A. (1995) Recursive Estimation of Motion, Structure and Focal Length,  in IEEE Tran. Pattern Analysis and Machine Vision, Vol. 17, No. 6, pp. 545-561

Pentland, A., (1994) Interpolation using Wavelet Bases, IEEE Trans. Pattern Analysis and Machine Vision, Vol. 16, No. 4, pp. 410-414.

Turk, M., and Pentland, A., (1991) Eigenfaces for Recognition, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 71-86.

Pentland, A., (1984)  Fractal-Based Description Of Natural Scenes, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Recognition, Nov. 1984, Vol. 6, No. 6, pp 661-674.

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