Faculty
Alex `Sandy’ Pentland directs MIT’s Human Dynamics Laboratory and the MIT Media Lab Entrepreneurship Program, co-leads the World Economic Forum Big Data and Personal Data initiatives, and is a founding member of the Advisory Boards for Nissan, Motorola Mobility, Telefonica, and a variety of start-up firms. He has previously helped create and direct MIT’s Media Laboratory, the Media Lab Asia laboratories at the Indian Institutes of Technology, and Strong Hospital’s Center for Future Health.
In 2012 Forbes named Sandy one of the `seven most powerful data scientists in the world’, along with Google founders and the CTO of the United States, and in 2013 he won the McKinsey Award from Harvard Business Review. He is among the most-cited computational scientists in the world, and a pioneer in computational social science, organizational engineering, wearable computing(Google Glass), image understanding, and modern biometrics. His research has been featured in Nature, Science, and Harvard Business Review, as well as being the focus of TV features on BBC World, Discover and Science channels. His most recent book is `Honest Signals,' published by MIT Press.
Over the years Sandy has advised more than 50 PhD students. Almost half are now tenured faculty at leading institutions, with another one-quarter leading industry research groups and a final quarter founders of their own companies.
Sandy's research group and entrepreneurship program have spun off more than 30 companies to date, three of which are publicly listed and several that serve millions of poor in Africa and South Asia. Recent spin-offs have been featured in publications such as the Economist and the New York Times, as well as winning a variety of prizes from international development organizations.
Pentland, Alex. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2025.
Aleta, Alberto, David Martín-Corral, Michiel A. Bakker, Ana Pastore y Piontti, Marco Ajelli, Maria Litvinova, Matteo Chinazzi, Natalie E. Dean, M. Elizabeth Halloran, Ira M. Longini Jr, Alex Pentland, Alessandro Vespignani, Yamir Moreno, and Esteban Moro. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Vol. 119, No. 26 (2022): e211218211.
Heroy, Samuel, Isabella Loaiza,Alex Pentland, and Neave O'Clery. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science (2022).
Michiel A. Bakker, Duy Patrick Tu, Krishna P. Gummadi, Alex Pentland, Kush R. Varshney, and Adrian Weller. In Proceedings of the 2021 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society, July 2021.
Adjodah, Dhaval, Karthik Dinakar, Matteo Chinazzi, Samuel P. Fraiberger, Alex Pentland, Samantha Bates, Kyle Staller, Alessandro Vespignani, and Deepak L. Bhatt, MIT Sloan Working Paper 6253-21. Cambridge, MA: MIT Sloan School of Management, 2021.
Lazer, David M.J., Alex Pentland, Duncan J. Watts, Sinan K. Aral, Susan Athey, Noshir Contractor, Deen Freelon, Sandra Gonzalez-Bailon, Gary King, Helen Margetts, Alondra Nelson, Matthew J. Salganik, Markus Strohmaier, Alessandro Vespignani, and Claudia Wagner. Science Vol. 369, No. 6507 (2020): 1060-1062.
We are in the fourth wave of artificial intelligence. In his new book, Alex Pentland says understanding AI from the 1960s, 1980s, and 2000s can help us develop technology that supports shared wisdom.
Using the wrong datasets to train AI models can result in legal risks, bias, or lower-quality models. The Data Provenance Initiative’s tool can help.
In this podcast episode, professor Alex "Sandy" Pentland discusses his new book "Shared Wisdom: Cultural Evolution in the Age of AI."
In this podcast episode, professor Sandy Pentland shares insights from his research on mapping social networks to identify communication bottlenecks and using AI to enhance social awareness within organizations.
Professor Sandy Pentland said: "The current business model is engagement. The social media you and I remember from 30 years ago didn't have that business model. AOL didn't care if you spent 15 more minutes in one discussion space, versus another discussion space. Now the business model is to maximize engagement, so that you can maximize advertisement."
In his new book, "Shared Wisdom, Cultural Evolution in the Age of AI," professor Alex "Sandy" Pentland delves into the theory around social communications, and how people utilize information together, to think about a way forward in the age of AI.
