Yaniv Altshuler, (born 1978) is an Israeli computer scientist an
entrepreneur He is a researcher at the
MIT Media Lab
The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fixed academic disciplines, but draws from ...
, at the Human Dynamics group headed by professor
Alex Pentland
Alex Paul "Sandy" Pentland (born 1951) is an American computer scientist, the Toshiba Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, and serial entrepreneur.
Education
Pentland received his bachelor's degree from the University of M ...
.
In 2014 he co-founde
Endor an
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 ...
spinoff, financially backed by
Eric Schmidt, that offers analytics to help understand, predict, and influence the dynamics of human behavior.
Together with Pentland, Altshuler is one of the creators of
Social Physics Social physics or sociophysics is a field of science which uses mathematical tools inspired by physics to understand the behavior of human crowds. In a modern commercial use, it can also refer to the analysis of social phenomena with big data.
Soc ...
– a theory that describes mathematical laws that govern the behavior of human crowds.
Biography
Altshuler received his Ph.D in Computer Science from the
Technion in Israel, under the supervision o
Prof. Alfred Brucksteinan
focusing on the optimization of
Drone Swarms. After graduating from the Technion and before arriving to
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 ...
he was a post-doctoral researcher at
Deutsche Telekom Innovation Laboratories
at Ben-Gurion University, working with the lab’s director
Prof. Yuval Elovici
He is also an alumnus of th
Technion Rothschild Excellence program
He spent 2011-2013 as a post-doctoral researcher 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 ...
studying networks and the way they evolve and act as a medium which people use to interact. Together with
Prof. Pentland he took part in the creation of the new science of
Social Physics Social physics or sociophysics is a field of science which uses mathematical tools inspired by physics to understand the behavior of human crowds. In a modern commercial use, it can also refer to the analysis of social phenomena with big data.
Soc ...
.
Work
Altshuler’s research interests include machine intelligence, swarm systems, urban computing and collaborative security. He edited the book ''Security and Privacy in Social Networks'', and is a co-author on the book ''Swarms and Network Intelligence''.
In 2007 he has co-founded Memoraze, a start-up company in the field of behavior analysis in computer games.
His work on the way social networks can be used for improving financial trading returns, known as “
Network Tuning”, was the first to demonstrate how an efficient integration of a large number of insights from retail investors can significantly outperform the returns of professional investors, as reported by Financial Times and Harvard Business Review.
Altshuler was also the leading researcher in the “Stealing Reality” project that had shown how anonymized phone data can be used to accurately reveal personal information about the phone users, as well as the “Social Amplifier” project, that demonstrated the usage of real-time analysis of billions of phone calls for homeland security. This research was covered by AOL news, PC World, the Communications of the ACM, and other publications.
In 2014 he co-founded Endor, an
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 ...
spinoff that uses
Social Physics Social physics or sociophysics is a field of science which uses mathematical tools inspired by physics to understand the behavior of human crowds. In a modern commercial use, it can also refer to the analysis of social phenomena with big data.
Soc ...
for an automatic on-demand prediction of consumer behaviors, and provides answers to plain language business questions. The company was funded among others by
Eric Schmidt.
Altshuler has published over 60 academic papers, and 15 patents.
References
External links
MIT Home Page of Altshuler*
Social Physics homepageat
MIT Media Lab
The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fixed academic disciplines, but draws from ...
Social Physics research and videosSocial Physics in Finance - video of Altshuler discussing the new scienceSocial Physics YouTube video channelStealing Reality: When Criminals Become Data Scientists - Extended AbstractEndor Home PageFirstMark - Rethinking Predictive Analytics - video of Altshuler's presentation
{{DEFAULTSORT:Altshuler, Yaniv
1978 births
Living people
Israeli computer scientists
Technion – Israel Institute of Technology alumni