The world’s largest digital networks afford limitless new possibilities … some promising, others alarming. Our aim is to revolutionize these networks, rather than be controlled by them, through intensive, multi-disciplinary research that provides ground-breaking insights into human behavior and fosters innovations that improve lives..
The mission of MIT Connection Science is to revolutionize technology-mediated human networks through analysis, prediction, data-driven design, and evaluation.
MIT Connection Science is working to unlock the trapped potential of the digital networks that surround us — from social media, to civic infrastructure systems, to enterprise databases that house and protect personal information.
Evidence of the urgent need for our work is all around us. Our choices, behaviors, beliefs and actions are continuously influencing or being influenced by networks and devices. The unintended consequences of our data-driven lives, both positive and negative, make news daily in every aspect of society … finance, mobility, politics, healthcare, and beyond. At the same time, the rapid pace of technological and behavioral change has antiquated time honored methods used to analyze and solve problems.
MIT Connection Science is a cross-disciplinary effort, drawing on the strengths of faculty, departments and researchers across the Institute, to decode, analyze, predict and interpret trends in this new environment. Our aim is to help executives, entrepreneurs and policymakers open up new possibilities by providing deeper insights into improving lives in our ever-changing, hyper-connected world.
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, and is the Toshiba Professor of Media, Arts, and Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He also holds a triple appointment at MIT in Media Arts and Sciences, Engineering Systems Division and with the Sloan School of Business.
Sandy has helped create and direct MIT’s Media Lab, the Media Lab Asia, and the Center for Future Health. He chairs the World Economic Forum's Data Driven Development Council, is Academic Director of the Data-Pop Alliance, and is a member of the Advisory Boards for Google, Nissan, Telefonica, the United Nations Secretary General, Monument Capital, and the Minerva Schools.
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 Social Physics, published by Penguin 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 are 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.
Sandy holds a B.G.S. from University of Michigan and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Stephen serves as The Managing Director of the Connection Science/Human Dynamics and is the key management lead, with responsibility for managing a team of faculty, staff and students, in creating an innovation-centric culture, to produce robust implementations of research software. Liaising with key external stakeholders, he increases awareness of, and engagement in, the programs, initiatives, and projects.
Previously, Stephen served as Technical Director at the MIT Laboratory for Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (CSAIL). Earlier, he served as Director of Systems Engineering, reporting to MIT's CIO. He is the founder of the MIT CIO Summit, the MIT CIO Symposium, and the MIT Kerberos Consortium. Stephen received the Andrew W. Mellon Award for Technology Collaboration in 2007.
Inquiries about membership in Connection Science initiatives can be directed to sbuckley@mit.edu
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 these fronts. He is also the technical director for the Internet Trust Consortium under MIT Connection Science that implements open source software based on cutting edge research at MIT. The consortium embodies the MIT philosophy of giving back to the community.
As part of the MIT outreach to industry, Thomas is active in a number of industry associations and standardization bodies. These include IETF, IEEE, Kantara, OASIS, TCG and OIC.
Throughout his 20 year career in the computer and network security industry Thomas has primarily been engaged in advancing new technologies, working in various CTO offices and advances engineering groups. Companies and organizations he contributed to include NTT/ATR Japan, Bay Networks (Nortel), VeriSign Security, Wave Systems and a number of start-ups. Over the years he has published three books and over sixty technical papers in journals and at conferences. He holds 19 patents in the areas of security and cryptography.
Thomas has a BSc degree in Computer Science with Honors from the University of Sydney, and PhD degree in Computer Science from the University of New South Wales in Australia.
Xin Liu has been a driving force in China’s big-data and AI industry as leader of global business at “TalkingData” — China’s largest independent data platform. She led cooperation with technology giants Google and Qualcomm, as well as global SMEs with the objective of expanding operations in China. She has directed research projects with academic institutions such as MIT, Harvard, University of Cambridge, and ETH Zurich. Prior to joining TalkingData, she managed strategic collaboration at the Nielsen Company with JD.com.
Xin received her BSc in Economics from University of Warwick, UK; and Master's degree in Supply Chain Management from MIT. Xin has a passion for using technology to foster a better relationship between human-animal-environment. She is currently based in Beijing, China.
Dr. Rajni Aneja is Global Head, Digital Strategy/Transformation at Novartis. She is a Connection Science Fellow, health care strategist, public speaker, transformative change agent with expertise in population health management and digital health. She serves as an advisor to variety of health and wellness organizations.
Dr. Aneja encompasses various vantage points as a clinician, executive, advisor, entrepreneur, speaker and technology advocate serving in senior leadership roles like chief medical officer for WebMD health, EVP of Joslin and strategic executive, transformation leader at Humana. Dr. Aneja is spreading the vision for strategy and innovation across different spectrums of health care
Dr. Aneja received her MD from Research Medical Center in Kansas City and MBA from University of Massachusetts.
Navroop holds a host of leadership roles in the DLT space, both as a practitioner as well as a
researcher. An economist by training, Navroop is currently building a FinTech company that
seeks to leverage blockchain technology. She is a Research Associate at the Centre for
Blockchain Technologies (CBT) at University College London and Centre d’économie de
l’Université Paris Nord (CEPN) and holds three masters in IP Management, Economics of
Innovation and Applied Economics.
A United Nations Youth Delegate for 2017, Navroop has co-authored Hyperledger’s Blockchain for Business online course. She speaks regularly at FinTech and blockchain conferences and currently serves on the advisory board of a host of blockchain companies, across industries. Previously, she has worked at Harvard University and United Nations Environment Programme. Her research interests are focused on Distributed Ledger Technologies, Game Theory, Networks Theory and Complex Systems Science.
Alexander Lipton is a Managing Director, Quantitative Solutions Executive at Bank of America. Prior to his current role, he was a Managing Director, Co-head of the Global Quantitative Group at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. He also held senior managerial positions at several sell and buy side firms. Currently, Alexander is an Adjunct Professor of Mathematics at NYU. Previously, he was a Visiting Professor of Quantitative Finance at University of Oxford and Advisory Board member at the Oxford-Man Institute. Earlier, he was Visiting Professor of Mathematics at Imperial College London. Before switching to finance, Alex was a Full Professor of Mathematics at the University of Illinois and a Consultant at Los Alamos National Laboratory. His current interests include FinTech, distributed ledgers, digital banking, monetary circuit, industrial strength derivative pricing including regulatory and economic capital calculations and valuation adjustments, as well as large scale holistic bank balance sheet optimization. Alexander published more than a hundred papers on applied mathematics and quantitative finance and authored/edited several books on these subjects.
Praveen Mandal is a veteran of 6 successful formative stage start-ups and a seasoned technology executive whose teams have developed industry recognized, market leading technologies and solutions in telecom, clean-tech and high performance compute industries. Companies and organizations founded are Pipal Systems (served as CEO, acquired by Riverstone Networks), ChargePoint (served as President), the Emerging Technologies Group at SGI (served as SVP & GM) and 2Know Services (serving as Chairman). Furthermore, has held senior executive positions at Riverstone Networks (VP of R&D), Lucent Technologies (VP of R&D for Carrier Ethernet Solutions) and aforementioned SGI (SVP of R&D and GM of Emerging Technologies Group).
In addition to his role as a Connection Science Fellow, Mr. Mandal currently serves on the Advisory Board of Illinois Institute of Technology’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and also serves on the Board of Directors at various hard technology startups in Boston and Silicon Valley. He is co-inventor on 10 awarded patents and holds a BSCE from Santa Clara University.
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 served as Chairman of Crisil, an Indian public company, and member of 800-Flowers board.
Deven is the founder of InfleXon, a firm focused on information and analytics markets. InfleXon advises companies on strategic transformation through disruptions in information, technology and geo political markets, as well as in risk and regulatory governance. Deven invests in and incubates next generation information enabled companies that focus on shaping ways to connect, use and learn from data to transform the way enterprises make decisions, manage risks and, value and monetize their data and analytic assets.
Deven led S&P starting in 2007, through the most tumultuous period in financial markets to pivot to a new product architecture, operating model, adapt to become regulated, re-build brand trust and strengthen risk governance. His experience in information markets extends across range of vertical sectors in financial, health, energy and market intelligence. At S&P, he engaged regularly with central banks, regulators and legislatures and spoke at many conferences globally.
Deven holds a PhD in Operations Management from The Ohio State University, MS in Industrial Engineering from University of Wisconsin, and BS from Birla Institute of Technology.
Stephen is an entrepreneur, business advisor, and has a long career in the development, funding and expansion of companies. He has served as a director or advisor to several companies, including Gridline Communications Holdings, Pear Therapeutics, Owl Biomedical and, LocoMobi. Stephen is also an active member of the Kennedy family financial advisory board. He served as Deputy Campaign Manager for Senator Edward Kennedy during his presidential and senatorial campaigns. And also served on the staff of the Senate Judiciary and Foreign Relations Committees. Stephen taught negotiation at Harvard University Law School and is a three-time winner of Harvard’s Danforth Award for Excellence in Teaching and a recipient of the Lyndehurst Foundation prize for social and artistic achievement. Mr. Kennedy-Smith holds an M.A. from Harvard University, a J.D. from Columbia University, and an M.A. Ed. from Harvard’s School for Education.
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 technical strategy. He led a number of IBM’s companywide initiatives including the Internet and e-business, supercomputing and Linux. From March of 2008 to June of 2014 he was a Strategic Advisor at Citigroup, working on innovation and technology initiatives including the transition to mobile digital money and payments.
He is a Strategic Advisor on Innovation at HBO, Visiting Lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, Adjunct Professor at the Imperial College Business School, and Executive-in-Residence at NYU’s Center for Urban Science and Progress. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Inno360, ID³ and the Corporation for National Research Initiatives; the Visiting Committee for the Physical Sciences Division at the University of Chicago; and the Advisory Board of USC’s Annenberg Innovation Lab.
Since 2005 Dr. Wladawsky-Berger has been writing a weekly blog, irvingwb.com, which has also been published in the Wall Street Journal’s CIO Journal since April of 2012.
Dr. Wladawsky-Berger received an M.S. and a Ph. D. in physics from the University of Chicago.
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 created and runs the MIT Translational Innovation Alliance. David has published multiple books on fintech, blockchain and cybersecurity.
He has as dual appointment as an Associate Fellow with the University of Oxford's Said Business School, where he teaches the Oxford Fintech and Oxford Blockchain online programmes.
David is the CEO of Distilled Analytics, a data/machine learning company derived from MIT research that is transforming the financial services industry with behavioral analytics; Vice Chairman of Endor.coin, a price prediction solution for cryptocurrencies; and Chairman of Riff Learning, an AI-driven collaboration technology platform provider also leveraging MIT intellectual heritage. He counsels the Government of Dubai on blockchain and digital identity; Millennium Advisors, a middle market credit liquidity provider, on technology trends; and Cleer.digital, a blockchain-based commodities exchange, on strategy.
His pro bono and public service includes serving on the advisory board of WorldQuant University, a program offering a totally-free, accredited, online Master’s degree in financial engineering. He previously advised the European Commission on commercializing innovation with a focus on digital technology. He is presently a member of the FinTech Industry Committee for FINRA, the U.S. securities industry's self-regulatory body, advising on new developments impacting financial services; and assisting the OECD with its understanding of fintech disruption.
He specializes in helping established organizations to build new revenue, having developed
$8.5 billion of growth opportunities with C-suite executives for Dun & Bradstreet, Wolters Kluwer, Ernst & Young, GE, The Walt Disney Company, AOL Verizon, and Starwood, as well as private equity and VC funds. He has led a number of private equity and venture capital-backed companies as CEO, CFO or COO.
David's courses and workshops for MIT include “Future Commerce”, “Data Academy”, “Inspiring Change”, and “Big Data and Social Analytics”. David and Alex “Sandy” Pentland have published books including Frontiers of Financial Technology, New Solutions for Cybersecurity, and Trust::Data. He also co-edits, together with Professor Pentland, the Connection Science imprint of MIT Press. David Shrier was granted an Sc.B. from Brown University in Biology and Theatre, and worked professionally as a dramaturg and director after college.
(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 design and architecture firm CIVICS.com, which he founded in 1996. At MIT Media Lab and MIT Connection Science, Dazza lecturers and conducts R&D on big data, digital identity federation, personal data sharing and is developing the field of computational law and jurimetrics through law.MIT.edu events and projects. Privately, Dazza provides professional consultancy services to industry, government and civic organizations, including fortune 50 companies, national governments, and marketplaces through CIVICS.com. Dazza has catalyzed or led numerous industry, governmental and public-private initiatives aimed at developing innovative legal solutions, technical standards and business models.
Susan is currently an Executive-in-Residence at Excel Ventures, where she focuses on innovation inside large corporations. As a senior executive with extensive experience in launching successful products and events, Susan has worked across the energy, financial services, technology and media industries. Susan is a relentless advocate of digital and data literacy.
Previously, Susan initiated and led a cross-platform team at Bloomberg which lead strategic innovations across the media, data and analytical platforms. Services to come out of this venture include the birth of “The Year Ahead”, a data-driven media franchise; D4GX, a program focused on Data for Good; and the incubation of Bloomberg’s award-winning data visualization teams. Susan previously led knowledge services at New Energy Finance, which was acquired by Bloomberg. In this role, Susan initiated the Bloomberg Future of Energy Summit in 2008, and is proud to continue as the Master of Ceremonies as it reaches its tenth year.
Prior to Bloomberg, Susan was an entrepreneur, founding First Tuesday Zurich in 1999. The business think tank connected start-ups and investors, and built networks of thought leaders. After that was acquired in 2006 by the professional online network XING, she established XING’s consulting and advisory business.
Susan started her career as a banker at UBS and Chase. Susan is a Fellow in Connection Science & Engineering at MIT, and an independent director on several profit and non-profit boards.
Susan graduated from Harvard College in the History of Science, Magna cum Laude, and lives in Boston.
Emmanuel Letouzé is the Director and co-Founder of Data-Pop Alliance. He is a Visiting Scholar at MIT Media Lab, a Fellow at HHI, a Research Associate at ODI, a Non-Resident Adviser at the International Peace Institute (IPI). His interests are in Big Data and development, economic demography, conflict and fragile states, poverty, migration, official statistics and fiscal policy. Emmanuel is the author of the UN Global Pulse's White Paper, “Big Data for Development: Challenges and Opportunities”, where he worked as Senior Development Economist in 2011-12, and the lead author of the report “Big Data for Conflict Prevention” and of the 2013 and 2014 OECD Fragile States reports. He is also a regular speaker on Big Data and development issues. In 2006-09 he worked for UNDP in New York, including on the Human Development Report research team. In 2000-04 he worked in Hanoi, Vietnam, for the French Ministry of Finance as a technical assistant on public finance and official statistics. He is a graduate of Sciences Po Paris (BA, Political Science, 1999, MA, Economic Demography, 2000) and Columbia University (MA, 2006), where he was a Fulbright fellow, and is finishing his PhD in Demography at UC Berkeley. Emmanuel is also a political cartoonist as ‘manu’; he held his first solo exhibition at the Invisible Dog Art Center in Brooklyn in 2011 and a 2nd exhibition at MIT Media Lab in 2014. He is an invited member of The Cartoon Movement and contributes cartoons to different media.
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 into public health and the development and management of large-scale longitudinal epidemiological cohort studies. He teaches a course on “Data Driven Healthcare” in the joint Harvard-MIT Health Sciences Technology program. Todd is a research scientist with CATCH and with the MIT Media Lab. Reid also serves as a research scientist and executive committee member of the Africa/Harvard School of Public Health Partnership for Cohort Research and Training (PaCT) studying 500,000 people to investigate Africa’s “epidemiological transition”—the shift to chronic ailments. He trained and worked for over a decade on cohort studies at Harvard Medical School, including the Nurses’ Health Studies (NHS). Todd Reid holds a doctorate from the Harvard School of Public Health, an MPH and an MSc. from Harvard University, and a MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management. He earned a BA in Biology (French and Chemistry minor) from UNC- Chapel Hill.
John Edge started his career in Capital Markets in the late 90’s with a focus on algorithmic trading, launching Europe’s first direct market access trading business. These new automated trading applications were made possible by the earlier launch of the open sourced protocol FIX.
Recognizing a market transformation was just beginning John developed an expertise in the design, build and launch of algorithmic trading businesses and went on to launch new lines of business at UBS, Lehman Brothers and J.P. Morgan.
In 2008, following the financial crisis, John cofounded Redkite, a technology company that anticipated the increase in budget and demand for RegTech solutions in financial markets. Redkite solved the problem of supervising electronic trading systems for financial crime and regulatory abuse events. By 2008 over 90% of listed securities trading were electronic, creating data flows that were both high in volume and frequency, rendering most trade surveillance systems unfit for purpose. By launching world’s first enterprise real-time trade surveillance system for capital markets Redkite captured a market segment and led to the acquisition of Redkite by NICE Systems in 2012.
Following the exit to NICE, John was asked to contribute to the design of a Bitcoin ETF and there began his journey into decentralized systems and token based protocols. Recognizing the parallels between the early days of FIX in Capital Markets and the new token based protocols, John identified a need for education and open communication, cofounding the Whitechapel Think. This Public-Private forum for the UK Government, Bank of England, Financial Conduct Authority and industry explored the potential for Distributed Ledger Technologies. The output from the Think Tank contributed to the Government Chief Scientist, Sir Mark Walport, leading a report on Distributed Ledger Technologies.
Through this work, John identified a requirement for creating a bridge between the existing institutions and the emerging technologies given the potential these new protocols provide for the creation of the ‘Internet of Everything’.
Over the last 4 years John has created an acceleration platform, focused on digital identity of people and devices, plus digital asset transaction networks to discover new models for the Internet of Everything economy.
In 2014 John co-founded ID2020, a principal driven Public-Private Partnership designed to address the market failures that have led to the vulnerable, especially women and children, being unable to receive protection under international and local law through lack of recognized identity. The four principals of identity being Personal, Private, Portable and Persistent are consistent with the ambition to ‘do no harm’ in the deployment of emerging technologies.
