Rosalind Picard, ScD, is Grover M. Hermann Professor in Health Sciences and Technology at the MIT Media Lab, where she is founder and director of the Affective Computing Research Group, associate academic head, and associated with the MIT Center for Neurobiological Engineering. She is author of the book Affective Computing and co-author of hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific and engineering articles in AI, wearable digital health technologies, affective computing, and human–computer interaction (h-index > 120). She is co-founder and chief scientist of Empatica, providing FDA-cleared digital biomarkers and medical quality data for clinical trials and research studies, and providing medical smartwatches that monitor for tremors and gait changes in Parkinson’s disease and for seizures in epilepsy. Dr. Picard is also co-founder of Affectiva, providing emotion AI technology, now a part of Smart Eye AB. An inventor on over 100 worldwide and U.S. patents, she is a popular speaker with a TED Talk of over 2 million views.

Dr. Picard is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Inventors, and a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and Association for the Advancement of Affective Computing (AAAC). She has been honored with the 2022 International Lombardy Prize for Computer Science Research, described as the “Nobel” in Italy, the 2025 Trotter Prize in Information, Complexity and Inference, and the 2026 IEEE Medal for Innovations in Healthcare Technology.

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