Leading authority on the innovation and implementation of human-centered technology.


Highlights

Sandy Pentland is the acclaimed author of the new book Honest Signals: How They Shape Our World. Honest signals are the unconscious signals we give each other to indicate our real intentions and reactions.

Sandy has pioneered new ways of measuring these signals that yield astounding new insights into what people's behavior really means. He's explored how this second channel of communication defines our social networks and influences our decisions, and how to harness 'network intelligence' to become better managers, workers, and communicators.

He's also developed new ways to understand group behavior using new techniques for "reality mining"—gathering data on human behavior in real life using sensors to track movement, among other things. Reality Mining was named a Breakthrough Idea of 2009 by Harvard Business Review and the same work won the Best Paper Award at the leading academic IT business conference.

A pioneer in organizational engineering, mobile information systems and the social science of digital technology, Sandy also speaks more broadly on how to develop human-centered technologies and bring them into the world successfully.

Sandy Pentland is Toshiba Professor of Media, Arts and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He directs the Human Dynamics Lab and oversees the Next Billion Network established to support aspiring entrepreneurs and emerging markets, and the EPROM Entrepreneurship Program in Africa.

Among the most cited computer scientists in the world, Newsweek named him one of the 100 Americans most likely to shape this century. He is the founding director of MediaLab Asia and co-director of the Digital Life Consortium.

Honest Signals

Using science and technology to understand human behavior and make organizations more creative and productive.

"Honest signals" are the nonverbal ways in which we unconsciously signal to each other our true feelings and intentions. (Think of the subtle signals at work in 'speed dating'.) Sandy Pentland and his researchers at MIT have developed sensors ('sociometers') that register these signals and ways to systematically interpret the data from these sensors to read human behavior in all new ways. Honest signals reveal reactions that go deeper than the intentions we consciously communicate through words. They are much more accurate predictors of an interaction's likely outcome and they can map social networks that would never appear in a chart of management structure.

Reality mining. Sensors can also reveal patterns that are hidden in our aggregate behavior as groups and communities. When some major geopolitical event is about to take place, lots of pizzas get delivered to the Pentagon. When the financial sector is under stress, lots of young bankers show up earlier for work and leave later for home. When the SARS epidemic broke out in Hong Kong, half the people in one big apartment building didn't go to work one morning, but nobody noticed the pattern. Now this movement can in fact be tracked and mapped and analyzed for meaningful prediction. Creative organizations are using such techniques to reach beyond demographics and basic profiles to learn what customers really like, who they associate with, what they really do, not just what they make and where they live.

Nonverbal behavior is a large part of who we are and how we make decisions.

Credentials

• Toshiba Professor of Media, Arts and Sciences, MIT
• Director, Human Dynamics Lab
• Oversees the Next Billion Network, EPROM Entrepreneurship Program in Africa
• Founding director, MediaLab Asia
• Former Academic Head, MIT MediaLab
• Co-director, Digital Life Consortium
• Co-founder, several research communities: Wearable Computing, Autonomous Mental Development, Digital Nations Consortium, Center for Future Health

Spin-off Companies

• Sense Networks
• Cogito Health
• Innerscope
• CellBazaar
• Way Systems
• Dimagi
• United Villages
• Virage (merged with Autonomy AUTNF.PK)
• Vivo (merged with RealNetworks NYNEX:RNWK)
• Viisage (now NYSE:ID)

Institutions Founded or Co-Founded

• Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship, MIT
• Center for Future Health, University of Rochester Strong Hospital
• Media Lab Asia, New Delhi
• IEEE Autonomous Mental Development TC
• IEEE Wearable Information Systems TC
• IEEE Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition

Awards Received

Best Paper Award, Int’l Conference on Information Systems, Mining Face-to-Face Networks [for] Productivity 2008

Reality Mining: 10 Technologies That Will Change The Way We Live, Technology Review 2008

Carlos Ghosn Award for Automotive Design 2008

Future Health Technology Award, for 'Honest Signals' Health Assessments 2008

Idea of the Year, USA Today, for 'Memory Glasses' 2006

Ars Electronica’s 'Digital Communities' Award, 2004

Most Visionary Technology, MIT Enterprise Forum, 2003

The Tech Museum Award for Equality, LINCOS Project, 2001

Alcatel Science and Technology Award, LINCOS (Little Intelligent Communities), 2001

Jean Pierre Devijver Prize for Best Paper, Intl. Asso. Pattern Recognition, 2001

Senior Fellow, Design Futures Council, 2000

Most Influential Paper of Decade Award, Intl. Asso. Pattern Recognition, 2000

The Century Club (100 people to watch in the next century), Newsweek, 1997

Best Paper Prize, Institute of Elec. and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) 1991

Best Paper Prize, American Asso. Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) 1984

Education

• University of Michigan, B.G.S. June 1976
• M.I.T., Ph.D., June 1982