Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences
Director, Media Lab Entrepreneurship Program
MIT
Professor Alex 'Sandy' Pentland is a pioneer in organizational engineering, mobile information systems, and computational social science. Pentland's research focus is on harnessing information flows and incentives within social networks, the big data revolution, and converting this technology into real-world ventures. His work provides organizations with better management tools and better ways to interact with their customers. Pentland is founder and director of the Human Dynamics group, and the Media Lab Entrepreneurship Program. He advises the World Economic Forum, Nissan Motor Corporation, and a variety of start-up companies. Pentland is the World Economic Forum’s lead academic for its big data and personal data initiatives. 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. His book, Honest Signals: How They Shape Our World was published in 2008 by the MIT Press. In 2011, he was chosen as one of the world's top data scientists by Tim O'Reilly in Forbes magazine.