Prof. Alex `Sandy’ Pentland

Director, Human Dynamics Laboratory

Director, Media Lab Entrepreneurship Program

Science

Edge.org: Reinventing Society with Big Data

American Scientist : To Signal Is Human

Scientific American: Wearable Intelligence

Nature: Secret Signals

Science: 

Computational Social Science
Collective Intelligence

Time Critical Social Mobilization

Harvard Business Review: Breakthrough Ideas
World Economic Forum: 

The New Deal on Data
Personal Data: A New Asset Class

Technology Review: Reality Mining

Robert Wood Johnson: Reality Mining for Health

Business and Engineering

Boston Globe: Google Glass

Forbes: Mining Human Behavior

Newsweek: A Trillion Points of Data

New York Times: Understanding Conversations

Strategy+Business: Honest Signals

Entrepreneurship

Financial Times: Twitter Effect

New York Times: Top Ten Internet Of Things Product

Business Week: World’s Most Intriguing Startups

ABC: Listening For Depression

Financial Times: Entrepreneurship For Development

Recent Awards
McKinsey Award Harvard Business Review

10 Technologies That Will Change The World

World’s Most Powerful Data Scientists

40th Anniversary of the Internet Grand Challenge

10 Technologies That Will Change The World

Future Health Technology Award

Carlos Ghosn Award for Automotive Design

Videos

Sustainable Digital Ecologies (Davos)

Breakthrough Idea of the Year talk at Davos

Honest Signals

Reality Mining

Ooh La La

Curriculum Vitae

More Videos

Research Papers

Click to see video

Alex `Sandy’ Pentland directs MIT’s Human Dynamics Laboratory and the MIT Media Lab Entrepreneurship Program, co-leads the World Economic Forum Big Data and Personal Data initiatives, and is a founding member of the Advisory Boards for Nissan, Motorola Mobility, 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.

In 2012 Forbes named Sandy one of the `seven most powerful data scientists in the world’, along with Google founders and the CTO of the United States, and in 2013 he won the McKinsey Award from Harvard Business Review. He is among the most-cited computational scientists in the world, and a pioneer in computational social science, organizational engineering, wearable computing (Google Glass), image understanding, and modern biometrics. His research has been featured in Nature, Science, and Harvard Business Review, as well as being the focus of TV features on BBC World, Discover and Science channels. 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.