Prof. Rosalind Picard, Sc.D., is an MIT professor, inventor, author, and entrepreneur. Her team’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. Her book, Affective Computing, helped launch the field by that name, giving computers (including software agents, robots, and interactive games) the skills of emotional intelligence.

She is one of the top two most-cited researchers in Digital Health and directs research at the MIT Media Lab on Affective Computing, especially focused on creating solutions to help people who are not flourishing or at risk of not flourishing. She teaches classes such as Affective Computing and Ethics, and AI for Good Mental Health. Picard’s inventions have led to AI-based advances in psychiatry and neurology, including the first smart watch (commercialized by Empatica, sold as “Embrace”) cleared by FDA for monitoring and alerting to seizures, and wearable devices used by thousands of researchers globally for collecting medical data used in clinical trials and patient-focused research.

Picard has co-founded two successful businesses, Affectiva and Empatica. Empatica recently created a new AI wearable, in use in studies by the US Health and Human Services, for warning of a likely viral respiratory infection. She has a TEDx talk viewed by nearly two million people, and has received a variety of recognitions including one of the highest honors for an engineer, election to the National Academy.