Alex Paul "Sandy" Pentland (born 1951) is an American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

, the

Toshiba , commonly known as Toshiba and stylized as TOSHIBA, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure system ...

Professor at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

, and serial

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...

Education

Pentland received his bachelor's degree from the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

and obtained his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

from

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

in 1982.

Career

He started as lecturer at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

in both

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

and

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...

, and joined the MIT faculty in 1986, where he became Academic Head of the Media Laboratory and received the Toshiba Chair in Media Arts and Sciences, and later joined the faculty of the

MIT School of Engineering The MIT School of Engineering (SoE) is one of the five schools of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. SoE has eight academic departments and two interdisciplinary institutes. The School gra ...

and the MIT Sloan School. He serves on the Board of the UN Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, advisory boards of

Consumers Union A consumer is a person or a group who intends to order, or uses purchased goods, products, or services primarily for personal, social, family, household and similar needs, who is not directly related to entrepreneurial or business activities. T ...

and

OECD The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; french: Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques, ''OCDE'') is an intergovernmental organisation with 38 member countries, founded in 1961 to stimulate e ...

, and formerly of the

American Bar Association The American Bar Association (ABA) is a voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students, which is not specific to any jurisdiction in the United States. Founded in 1878, the ABA's most important stated activities are the setting of acad ...

AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile tel ...

, and several of the startup companies he has co-founded. He previously co-founded and co-directed the

Media Lab Asia Introduction Digital India Corporation is a not for profit Company set up by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Govt. of India, under Section 8 of Companies Act 2013.Digital India Corporation (DIC) leads and guides in reali ...

laboratories at the

Indian Institutes of Technology The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are central government owned public technical institutes located across India. They are under the ownership of the Ministry of Education of the Government of India. They are governed by the Instit ...

and

Strong Hospital Strong Memorial Hospital (SMH) is an 886-bed medical facility, part of the University of Rochester Medical Center complex (abbreviated URMC), in Rochester, New York, United States. Opened in 1926, it is a major provider of both in-patient and out ...

's Center for Future Health. Pentland is one of the most cited authors in

with an

h-index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with obvious success indicators such as winn ...

of 144, co-led the

World Economic Forum The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international non-governmental and lobbying organisation based in Cologny, canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded on 24 January 1971 by German engineer and economist Klaus Schwab. The foundation, ...

discussion in Davos that led to the EU privacy regulation GDPR, and was one of the UN Secretary General's "Data Revolutionaries" that helped forge the transparency and accountability mechanisms in the UN's

Sustainable Development Goals The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or Global Goals are a collection of 17 interlinked objectives designed to serve as a "shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future".United Nations (2017) R ...

. He founded and currently directs the MIT Connection Science an MIT-wide program which pioneered computational social science, using big data and AI to better understand human society, and the Trust::Data Alliance which is an alliance of companies and nations building open-source software that makes AI and data safe, trusted and secure. He also founded the MIT Media Lab Entrepreneurship Program which creates ventures to take cutting-edge technologies into the real world, serves as co-lead of the IEEE Council and Extended Intelligence, Academic Director of the Data-Pop Alliance, and is co-founder of Imagination In Action which brings world-changing inventors together with leaders of governments and companies. In 2011 Tim O’Reilly named him one of the world's seven most powerful data scientists along with

Larry Page Lawrence Edward Page (born March 26, 1973) is an American business magnate, computer scientist and internet entrepreneur. He is best known for co-founding Google with Sergey Brin. Page was the chief executive officer of Google from 1997 unt ...

, then CEO of

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

and the CTO of the

Department of Health and Human Services The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is a cabinet-level executive branch department of the U.S. federal government created to protect the health of all Americans and providing essential human services. Its motto is " ...

. Recent invited keynotes include annual meetings of OECD,

G20 The G20 or Group of Twenty is an intergovernmental forum comprising 19 countries and the European Union (EU). It works to address major issues related to the global economy, such as international financial stability, climate change mitigation, ...

World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Interna ...

, and

JP Morgan JPMorgan Chase & Co. is an American multinational investment bank and financial services holding company headquartered in New York City and incorporated in Delaware. As of 2022, JPMorgan Chase is the largest bank in the United States, the wo ...

. Pentland's research focuses on Web 3.0, AI,

Computational Social Science Computational social science is the academic sub-discipline concerned with computational approaches to the social sciences. This means that computers are used to model, simulate, and analyze social phenomena. Fields include computational economics ...

, and

Privacy Privacy (, ) is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. The domain of privacy partially overlaps with security, which can include the concepts of a ...

. His research helps people better understand the "physics" of their social environment, and helps individuals, companies and communities to reinvent themselves to be safer, more productive, and more creative. He has previously been a pioneer in wearable computing, ventures technology for developing nations, and image understanding. His research has been featured in ''Nature'', ''Science'', and ''

Harvard Business Review ''Harvard Business Review'' (''HBR'') is a general management magazine published by Harvard Business Publishing, a wholly owned subsidiary of Harvard University. ''HBR'' is published six times a year and is headquartered in Brighton, Massach ...

'', as well as being the focus of TV features on

BBC World BBC World News is an international English-language pay television network, operated under the ''BBC Global News Limited'' division of the BBC, which is a public corporation of the UK government's Department for Digital, Culture, Media and S ...

Discover Discover may refer to: Art, entertainment, and media * ''Discover'' (album), a Cactus Jack album * ''Discover'' (magazine), an American science magazine Businesses and brands * DISCover, the ''Digital Interactive Systems Corporation'' * D ...

and

Science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

channels. Companies co-founded or incubated by Pentland's lab include the largest rural health care service delivery system in the world, the advertising arm of

Alibaba Ali Baba (character), Ali Baba is a character from the folk tale ''Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves''. Ali Baba or Alibaba may also refer to: Films * Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1902 film), ''Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves'' (1902 film), a F ...

., the identity authentication technology that powers India's digital identity system

Aadhaar Aadhaar ( hi, आधार, ādhār, lit=base, foundation, bn, আধার) is a 12-digit unique identity number that can be obtained voluntarily by the citizens of India and resident foreign nationals who have spent over 182 days in twelve ...

, and rural service outlets for India's largest payment solutions provider. More recent companies include Ginger.io (mental health services), CogitoCorp.com (AI coaching for interaction management), Humanyze.com (organizational health), Endor.com (turn-key, privacy-preserving AI), Enigma.co (confidential smart contracts), Wise Systems (delivery planning and optimization), Riff Analytics (on-line meeting enhancement), Sila Money (stable bank and stablecoin), Akoya (secure, privacy-preserving financial interactions), FortifID (digital identity), Collaborative Community Services (investment in underserved communities), Prosperia (Fairness and bias mitigation for social services throughout Latin America), and Secure AI Labs (federated medical data analytics). Pentland, along with colleagues

William J. Mitchell William John Mitchell (15 December 1944 – 11 June 2010) was an Australian-born author, educator, architect and urban designer, best known for leading the integration of architectural and related design arts practice with computing and other t ...

and

Kent Larson Kent Larson is an architect, entrepreneur, and academic, currently the director of the City Science research group at the MIT Media Lab. Before joining MIT full-time in 2000, Larson practiced architecture for 15 years in New York City. His resea ...

at the

are credited with first exploring the concept of a Living Laboratory. They argued that a living lab represents a user-centric research methodology for sensing,

prototyping A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process. It is a term used in a variety of contexts, including semantics, design, electronics, and software programming. A prototype is generally used to ...

, validating and refining complex solutions in multiple and evolving real life contexts. Nowadays, several living lab descriptions and definitions are available from different sources.

Publications

*''Honest Signals'' (2010) describes research chosen as Harvard Business Review Breakthrough Idea of the Year. *''Social Physics'' (2015) describes research that won both the McKinsey Award from Harvard Business Review and the 40th Anniversary of the Internet Grand Challenge.

References

External links

MIT Home Page and link to MIT Human Dynamics research group
*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pentland, Alex Paul 1952 births Living people University of Michigan alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni American computer scientists Stanford University School of Engineering faculty MIT School of Engineering faculty Ubiquitous computing researchers Stanford University Department of Psychology faculty MIT Media Lab people New England Complex Systems Institute MIT Sloan School of Management faculty Government by algorithm