Alex `Sandy’
Pentland directs MIT’s Human Dynamics Laboratory and the MIT Media
Lab Entrepreneurship Program, and advises the World Economic Forum,
Nissan Motor Corporation, and a variety of start-up firms. He has
previously helped create and direct MIT’s Media Laboratory, the
Media Lab Asia laboratories at the Indian Institutes of Technology, and Strong Hospital’s Center for Future
Health.
Sandy is among the most-cited
computational scientists in the world, and a
pioneer in computational social science, organizational engineering,
mobile computing, image understanding, and modern biometrics. His
research has been featured in Nature, Science, the World Economic Forum,
and Harvard Business Review, as well as being the focus of TV features
including Nova and Scientific American Frontiers. His most recent book is `Honest
Signals,' published by MIT Press.
Over the years Sandy
has advised more than 50 PhD students. Almost half are now
tenured faculty at leading institutions, with another one-quarter leading
industry research groups and a final quarter founders of their own
companies.
Sandy's
research group and entrepreneurship program have spun off more than 30
companies to date, three of which are publicly listed and several that
serve millions of poor in Africa and South Asia. Recent spin-offs have
been featured in publications such as the Economist and the New York
Times, as well as winning a variety of prizes from international
development organizations.
Interesting experiences include winning the DARPA 40th Anniversary of the
Internet Grand Challenge, dining with British Royalty and the President
of India, staging fashion shows in Paris, Tokyo, and New
York, and developing a method for counting
beavers from space.