Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland is the founding faculty director of the MIT Connection Science Research Initiative, which uses network science to access and change real-world human behavior. He also holds a triple appointment at MIT in Media Arts and Sciences, Engineering Systems Division and with the Sloan School of Management.
In 2012, Forbes named him as one of the “seven most powerful data scientists in the world”, along with the founders of Google and the CTO of the United States. He served as a member of the Advisory Boards for Google, Nissan, Telefonica, Tencent, and a variety of startup firms, and has co-led the World Economic Forum Big Data and Personal Data initiatives.