Rosalind Picard

Founder and Director of the Affective Computing Research Group, MIT Media Laboratory

Rosalind W. Picard is founder and director of the Affective Computing Research Group at the MIT Media Laboratory and co-director of the Things That Think Consortium, the largest industrial sponsorship organization at the lab.  She is also co-founder, chairman, and chief scientist for the MIT spin-out company, Affectiva.  Picard also co-directs the MIT Autism and Communication Technology Initiative.

The author of over two hundred peer-reviewed scientific articles in multidimensional signal modeling, computer vision, pattern recognition, machine learning, and human-computer interaction, Picard is known internationally for pioneering research in affective computing and, prior to that, research in content-based image and video retrieval. She is a graduate with highest honors from the Georgia Institute of Technology and holds Masters and Doctorate degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT.

Picard is an active inventor and her group's inventions have been twice named to "top ten" lists, including the New York Times Magazine's Best Ideas of 2006 for their Social Cue Reader, Used In Autism, and 2011's Popular Science Top Ten Inventions for a Mirror that Monitors Vital Signs.