Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland is a foremost authority on organizational engineering, mobile information systems, and computational social science. His pioneering research focuses on utilising the revolutionary nature of social networks by engaging the potential in their mass of data and information to realise the possibilities for real-world application. By doing so Pentland can apply these findings to organisations to better their productivity and enhance their human identity.
Pentland is founder and director of the Human Dynamics group and the Media Lab Entrepreneurship Program at MIT, where he also serves as Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences. He advises the Nissan Motor Corporation and is the World Economic Forum’s lead academic for its big data and personal data initiatives. In 1997 Newsweek magazine named him one of the 100 Americans likely to shape this century and in 2011, he was chosen as one of the world’s top data scientists by Forbes magazine.
Pentland has been the recipient of a formidable number of award, like the Harvard Business Review Breakthrough Idea 2009 and the Future Health Technology Award for ‘Honest Signals’ Health Assessments 2008. He has also contributed to and taught at prestigious educational institutes like Stanford and the University of Rochester. Campus Party is honoured to welcome Alex Pentland as a keynote speaker this September.
