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Prof. Alex 'Sandy' Pentland

Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences
Head, Human Dynamics Group
Senior Research Fellow, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI)

Primary DLC

MIT Media Lab

MIT Room: E15-387
(617) 253-3818
https://www-media-mit-edu.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/people/sandy/overview/

Assistant

Teri Hagen
(617) 452-5619
thagen@mit.edu

Areas of Interest and Expertise

Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Computer-Aided Design Systems
3-D Computer Graphics
Wearable Technology
Wearable Computing
Social Networking
Big Data
Management Science
Information Technology
Blockchain

Research Summary

Professor 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. Pentland is founder and director of the Human Dynamics Lab, and the Media Lab Entrepreneurship Program. He advises the World Economic Forum, Nissan Motor Corporation, and a variety of start-up companies. 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.

Recent Work

  • Video

    10.25.23-Digital-Pentland

    October 25, 2023Conference Video Duration: 40:11
    Keynote: Community Transformers 

    10.25.23-Digital-Lightning-Pentland

    October 25, 2023Conference Video Duration: 9:50
    Lightning Talk

    10.25.23-Digital-Lightning-Talks

    October 25, 2023Conference Video Duration: 87:47
    Lightning Talks

    2.18.21-Pentland-Shrier.Kim

    February 18, 2021Conference Video Duration: 59:53
    Alex Pentland
    Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, MIT Connection Science
    David Shrier
    Professor of Practice, AI & Innovation, Imperial College Business School
    Douglas Kim
    Connection Science Fellow, MIT Connection Science

    11.3.20-Digital-Integration-Alex Pentland

    November 3, 2020Conference Video Duration: 42:19
    Alex Pentland
    Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, MIT Media Lab

    11.3.20-Digital-Integration-Panel-Discussion-W.Chu-P.Weckesser-K.Ruberg-J.Peng-A.Pentland-J.Williams-A.Sanchez

    November 3, 2020Conference Video Duration: 63:22
    Wilson Chu
    Chairman, Defond Group
    Peter Weckesser
    Chief Digital Officer, Schneider Electric
    Kalev Ruberg
    VP Future & Chief Innovation Officer, Teck Resources Limited
    John Peng
    EVP & Chief Digital Officer, iSoftStone
    Alex Pentland
    Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, MIT Media Lab
    John Williams
    Professor of Information Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering Systems
    Abel Sanchez
    Director, Geospatial Data Center (GDC)

    10.27.20-New-Retail-Pentland

    October 27, 2020Conference Video Duration: 28:47
    Concerns about data privacy, national localization, and security are driving dramatic change in the digital systems that support commerce and government.  These new systems are distributed, all-digital, natively encrypted, continuously auditable, and feature automatic legal enforcement.  Examples are the UBIN systems being fielded by Temasek and Singapore Monetary Authority, the Swiss Trust Chain fielded by SwissPost and SwissComm (which we helped design), and the Chinese national "smart city" system.  Along with these commercial systems are financial systems that such as Fidelity's Akoya (which helped design), Intuit and EY's internal tax reconciliation systems, and the national digital currencies being test deployed or seriously considered by most OPEC nations.   I will focus on

        what these next-gen systems are and how they change the game
        what security looks like in these new systems
        how all this changes AI and the value of data.

    A Coronavirus Briefing with MIT

    March 16, 2020Conference Video Duration: 167:8

    A Coronavirus Briefing with MIT

    Stephanie Woerner - 2019 ICT Conference

    April 16, 2019Conference Video Duration: 35:46

    Creating the Next Generation Enterprise

    How will your company compete in the digital economy? Based on her book What’s Your Digital Business Model? (Harvard Business School Press, 2018), co-authored with Peter Weill and cited by Forbes as one of the top ten business books in 2018, Stephanie L. Woerner presents six questions for business leaders to answer in order to navigate their digital transformation journeys. Stephanie will describe the future business model framework, based on two dimensions of major change enabled by digitization — getting closer to end consumers and moving from value chains to ecosystems—and show the financial performance of firms pursuing each model with examples drawn from a variety of industries. She will discuss what it takes to succeed in each model and the key capabilities each company must build.
     
    2019 MIT Information and Communication Technologies Conference

    Alex Pentland - 2019 ICT Conference

    April 16, 2019Conference Video Duration: 38:19

    MIT TRUST::DATA CONSORTIUM

    Developing privacy-preserving identity systems and safe distributed computation, enabling an Internet of Trusted Data. The Trust::Data Consortium addresses the growing tension between societal data proliferation and data security by developing specifications, software, tools and documentation that help organizations adopt a holistic approach to cyber protection. Trust::Data is building new models for digital identity, data provenance, universal access, and secure privacy-preserving transactions to harness the future potential of global data sharing.
     
    2019 MIT Information and Communication Technologies Conference

    Data Ownership Panel - 2016-ICT-Conference

    April 27, 2016Conference Video Duration: 71:10

    Data Ownership Impact on Privacy and Security

    Encryption as a means of data control (privacy and security):

    For a long time, interaction on Web has been less private or secure than many end-users expect and prefer. Now, however, the widespread
    deployment of encryption helps us to change that.

    * Making encryption widespread. For years we have known how to do encryption, but it wasn't widely used, because it wasn't part of overall
    system design. In response, particularly as we've become aware of capabilities for network-scale monitoring, standards groups including
    IETF and W3C have worked to encrypt more of those network connections at the protocol and API-design phase, and to make it easier to deploy and use encrypted protocols such as HTTPS. Encryption won't necessarily stop a targeted attack (attackers can often break end-user systems where they can't brute-force break the encryption), but it raises the effort required for surveillance and forces transparency on other network participants who want to see or shape traffic.

    * Secure authentication. Too many of our "secure" communications are protected by weak password mechanisms, leaving users open to password database breaches and phishing attacks. Strong new authentication mechanisms, being worked on for web-wide standards, can replace the password; helping users and applications to secure accounts more effectively. Strong secure authentication will enable users to manage their personal interactions and data privacy, as well as securing commercial data exchange.

    2016 MIT Information and Communication Technologies Conference

    Alex Pentland - 2016-ICT-Conference

    April 27, 2016Conference Video Duration: 16:1

    Data Ownership Impact on Privacy and Security

    Encryption as a means of data control (privacy and security):

    For a long time, interaction on Web has been less private or secure than many end-users expect and prefer. Now, however, the widespread
    deployment of encryption helps us to change that.

    * Making encryption widespread. For years we have known how to do encryption, but it wasn't widely used, because it wasn't part of overall
    system design. In response, particularly as we've become aware of capabilities for network-scale monitoring, standards groups including
    IETF and W3C have worked to encrypt more of those network connections at the protocol and API-design phase, and to make it easier to deploy and use encrypted protocols such as HTTPS. Encryption won't necessarily stop a targeted attack (attackers can often break end-user systems where they can't brute-force break the encryption), but it raises the effort required for surveillance and forces transparency on other network participants who want to see or shape traffic.

    * Secure authentication. Too many of our "secure" communications are protected by weak password mechanisms, leaving users open to password database breaches and phishing attacks. Strong new authentication mechanisms, being worked on for web-wide standards, can replace the password; helping users and applications to secure accounts more effectively. Strong secure authentication will enable users to manage their personal interactions and data privacy, as well as securing commercial data exchange.

    2016 MIT Information and Communication Technologies Conference

Related Faculty

Dr. Hae Won Park

Research Scientist

Prof. Joseph M Jacobson

Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences and Mechanical Engineering

Daniel J Greenwood

Research Affiliate