Our Team

Alex “Sandy” Pentland is founding faculty director of the MIT Connection Science Research Initiative, which uses network science to access and change real-world human behavior.  He is a Stanford… Read More

Stephen C. Buckley serves as Executive Director of the Connection Science and Human Dynamics programs at MIT.  Steve runs “Sandy Pentland’s Flying Circus”, and acts as MIT’s key management… Read More

Thomas Hardjono is the CTO of Connection Science and Engineering. He leads technical projects and initiatives around identity, security and data privacy, and engages industry partners and sponsors on… Read More

Dr. Rajni Aneja, MD, MBA, CPE is a 2023 Presidential Innovation Fellow and a senior physician executive at the intersection of medicine/business and technology with subject matter expertise in strategy/innovation/population… Read More

Alexander Lipton is Global Head, Research & Development at Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Professor of Practice at Khalifa University, Visiting Professor and Dean’s Fellow at the Hebrew University of… Read More

Praveen Mandal is a veteran of 7 successful start-ups and a seasoned technology executive whose teams have developed industry recognized, market leading technologies and solutions in telecom equipment, electric vehicle charging, high performance compute… Read More

Connection Science Fellow Deven Sharma served as President of Standard & Poor’s, Head of Global Strategy and M&A at The McGraw-Hill Companies and partner at Booz Allen Hamilton. He… Read More

Connection Science Fellow Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger retired from IBM in May of 2007 after a 37 year career with the company, where his primary focus was on innovation and… Read More

David Shrier is a globally recognized authority on financial innovation, and teaches “Future Commerce“ at the MIT Media Lab (the first graduate fintech class in North America). He also… Read More

(Daniel) Dazza Greenwood is an entrepreneur, innovator and national thought on design and deployment of scalable, distributed Trust Network and other digital systems. Dazza heads the digital business systems… Read More

Dr Emmanuel Letouzé is a Marie Curie Fellow at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) in Barcelona (2021-23) and the Director of Data-Pop Alliance, a not-for-profit non-governmental organization he founded in 2013 with the MIT Media Lab,… Read More

Todd Reid is an epidemiologist and global health practitioner at the Harvard School of Public Health and Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Reid's research focuses on integrating technology and innovation… Read More

Innovation is the disciplined creation of new knowledge.  At MIT, we believe that innovation occurs more frequently when individuals from diverse disciplines connect in new ways to help create… Read More

Ajay Bhalla is President of Cyber & Intelligence Solutions at Mastercard, and serves on the company’s global management committee.  His team develops product solutions that enhance safety, security and… Read More

Julius has held technology leadership roles at PepsiCo and Wells Fargo Bank, he is the Residence Entrepreneur at MIT Media Lab. Julius is the Chairman, Founder and CEO of UWINCorp… Read More

Francesca Grippa is Professor and Faculty Director at Northeastern University, where she teaches Business Strategy and New venture Creation. Dr Grippa’s research interests include: collaborative innovation networks, entrepreneurship and… Read More

Morgan Frank is an Assistant Professor at the School of Computing and Information at the University of Pittsburgh. Morgan is interested in the complexity of AI, the future of… Read More

Esteban Moro is a Reseach Scientist in Connection Science, an associate professor at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid in Spain, and a member of the Joint Institute UC3M Santander… Read More

Carlos experience and interests comprise data and social analytics, ICT and international development. He served as the Technical Program Manager of Open Algorithms (OPAL) project, a techno-institutional innovation led… Read More

Cosimo Accoto is a Connection Science Fellow at MIT.  A philosopher by training, his techno-cultural research interests are focused on: software theory, sensor society, data science, artificial intelligence, platform… Read More

Michiel is an MIT Computer Science PhD student and a research assistant in the Human Dynamics group at the MIT Media Lab, where he is supervised by Alex 'Sandy' Pentland. His research lies at the… Read More

Dan is a doctoral candidate at the MIT Media Lab, where they research the technical, social, and legal implications of data and AI on communities and workers. Their interdisciplinary… Read More

Yuan Yuan is an Assistant Professor at the Krannert School of Management at Purdue University. Yuan is interested in understanding social networks using advanced computational techniques, such as machine… Read More

Abdullah Almaatouq is an Assistant Professor of Information Technology at the MIT Sloan School of Management. His research focuses on the mechanisms of decision-making in networked environments where decisions… Read More

Mohsen Bahrami is a postdoctoral associate in the Connection Science group at MIT. His research field is computational social science and he has been working on data driven behavioral analytics to… Read More

Anne Kim is co-founder and CTO of Secure AI Labs, which is based on her graduate work at MIT. She worked with Professor Alex "Sandy" Pentland, principal investigator of the Human… Read More

Vinicius Brei is a Research Affiliate and Connection Science Fellow at the MIT Media Lab, Chair Tramontina Eletrik Associate Professor of Marketing at the Federal University of Rio Grande… Read More

Jeff Saviano is the EY Global Tax Innovation Leader. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts Jeff is a Partner (Principal) with EY and a member of EY’s global innovation leadership team.… Read More

Dr. Eduardo Castello experience and interests comprise robotics, blockchain technology, and complex systems. Eduardo was a Marie Curie Fellow in the Human Dynamics (HD) group at the MIT Media Lab where he worked with Prof. Alex… Read More

Keeley is a PhD student at MIT and has industry experience at Meta, Apple, Google, and several startups. Her research focuses on building machine learning models and statistical approaches… Read More

I am a legal engineer interested in reimagining the ways technology, design, and visualization can be combined to improve the efficiency and interoperability of the legal system. I am… Read More

Dr. Yaniv Altshuler is a researcher at MIT Media Lab and the founder and CEO of Metha.ai, an industry-leading start-up that uses AI to help dairy and beef farmers boost their productivity while significantly… Read More

Yan Leng is Assistant Professor at the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas, Austin. She holds master degrees in Computer Science and Transportation Engineering, both from… Read More

José Balsa-Barreiro is a research scientist in Connection Science and Human Dynamics group at the MIT Media Lab where he works with Prof. Sandy Pentland. He is also part of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he is involved in the… Read More

Douglas Kim has 30 years of experience in co-founding and running category-leading enterprise software businesses, customer engagement, and business process automation. He was the founder and GM for the… Read More

Wilson D’Souza is Senior Founding MIT Connection Science Fellow and founding member and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Akoya, a startup transforming the way consumers share their data by providing… Read More

Joel Dietz is a serial entrepreneur and intellectual historian who helped found several key initiatives in the cryptocurrency space, including Ethereum, MetaMask, the first smart contract educational channel, and… Read More

  My research goal is to understand statistics and probability with more depth, and then combine the learnings with engineering to make relevant contributions to society. Right now my… Read More

Hossein Rahnama is a computer scientist and an academic entrepreneur. As a visiting professor at the MIT Media Lab and professor at Ryerson University, where he co-founded Ryerson DMZ,… Read More

Dr. Vijay N. Gadepally is a Senior Member of the Technical Staff at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory and leads the research activities of the Lincoln… Read More

Dr. Jeremy Kepner is Head and Founder of the MIT Lincoln Laboratory Supercomputing Center (LLSC), and also a Founder of the MIT-Air Force AI Accelerator. Lincoln Laboratory is a… Read More

Takahiro Yabe is a tenure-track Assistant Professor at the Center for Urban Science and Progress, New York University.  Previously between 2021 and 2023, he was a Postdoctoral Associate at… Read More

Roland Scharrer is currently the Group Chief Data & Emerging Technologies Officer at AXA. Based in Paris, Roland oversees vision, strategy, investments, implementation, and governance on Data/AI, digital transformation, and emerging technologies (IoT, Geospatial, High-Performance/Quantum… Read More

Dr. Hugo Caicedo is a member of the Global Medical Development and Accelerated R&D Executive Leadership program at Lilly. Previously, he worked at BMS and J&J. As an MIT… Read More

Guy C. Fedorkow received his BASc and MASc in Engineering Sciences at University of Toronto, and went on to develop both communications and high-throughput parallel computer architectures at Bolt,… Read More

IIsabella is a Ph.D. student in the Human Dynamics Group at the MIT Media Lab. She uses value-sensitive design to build tools to help people make pivotal life decisions… Read More

Tobin is a Ph.D. student in Prof. Alex 'Sandy' Pentland's Human Dynamics group at the MIT Media Lab. His research lies at the intersection of data, privacy, and society;… Read More

Ziv Epstein (he/him) is a PhD Candidate at the MIT Media Lab. At the intersection of computational social science and design, his research explores ways to conceptualize and navigate attention… Read More

Shahar Somin, is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Human Dynamics Group, at the MIT Media Lab, working with Professor Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland. Shahar’s research concentrates on network theory, and… Read More

Robert is pursuing a joint JD-PhD degree at Harvard Law School and the MIT Media Lab. His work focuses on Computational Law: leveraging computation to analyze, improve, and extend… Read More

Gabriele Mazzini is the architect and lead author of the proposal on the Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) by the European Commission, where he has focused on the legal… Read More