AIWS Roundtable: Solutions to Reopen for Democratic Countries

Time: 9:00 am – 10:00 am (EST), April 22, 2020
Speaker: Alex Pentland,
Faculty Founding Director, the MIT Connection Science
Co-founder of the AIWS Innovation Network (AIWS.net) and the Social Contract 2020
The Toshiba Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, MIT

Professor Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland directs the MIT Connection Science and Human Dynamics labs and previously helped create and direct the MIT Media Lab and the Media Lab Asia in India. He is one of the most-cited scientists in the world, and Forbes recently declared him one of the “7 most powerful data scientists in the world” along with Google founders and the Chief Technical Officer of the United States.  co-led the World Economic Forum discussion in Davos that led to the EU privacy regulation GDPR, and was central in forging the transparency and accountability mechanisms in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.  He has received numerous awards and prizes such as the McKinsey Award from Harvard Business Review, the 40th Anniversary of the Internet from DARPA, and the Brandeis Award for work in privacy.

He is a founding member of advisory boards for Google, AT&T, Nissan, and the UN Secretary General, a serial entrepreneur who has co-founded more than a dozen companies including social enterprises such as the Data Transparency Lab and the Harvard-ODI-MIT DataPop Alliance . He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and leader within the World Economic Forum.

Over the years Sandy has advised more than 60 PhD students. Almost half are now tenured faculty at leading institutions, with another one-quarter leading industry research groups and a final quarter founders of their own companies. Together Sandy and his students have pioneered computational social science, organizational engineering, wearable computing (Google Glass), image understanding, and modern biometrics. His most recent books are Social Physics, published by Penguin Press, and Honest Signals, published by MIT Press.

Interesting experiences include dining with British Royalty and the President of India, staging fashion shows in Paris, Tokyo, and New York, and developing a method for counting beavers from space.

Moderator: Lyndon Haviland, MPH, DrPH
Chair, Foundation Board
CUNY School of Public Health
Distinguished Scholar
Adviser of Formal Secretary General of United Nations

Lyndon Haviland, MPH, DrPH, is an international health consultant with more than 30 years public health experience. Dr. Haviland began her career in the US Refugee Service, working in multiple camps with South East Asia refugees. In 1991, she co-authored the first humanitarian needs assessment of Cambodia for the US Agency for International Development. Since that time, Dr. Haviland has led various public health campaigns, initiatives and organizations. Her consulting clients include UN agencies, international NGOs, and former Heads of State. She has served as a Board member for numerous international and domestic NGOs including the American Public Health Association where she is the recipient of two of its highest honors, Friend of the Student Assembly and the Director’s Citation.

As a consultant, Dr. Haviland has advised global leaders, presidents and agency heads on maternal and child health, access to vaccines, vaccine hesitancy, sexual and reproductive health, tobacco control and health promotion / disease prevention. Her work spans strategy, communications, leadership and partnership development. She was the Senior Project Leader for the UN Secretary-General’s Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health Every Woman, Every Child) , an initiative helped to align all member states of the United Nations around a common strategy for saving more than 16 million lives and raised more than $40 billion in new resources for women and children’s health globally. Every Woman, Every Child is widely acknowledged as a turning point for multi-sectoral partnerships at the United Nations.

Dr. Haviland has worked in a broad range of professional environments spanning domestic, academic, multinational and multilateral organizations including the Earth Echo International, GAVI, UN Women, Policy Wisdom, Rabin Martin, the Aspen Institute, UNAIDS, the United Nations Department of Public Information, the UN Foundation, HRSA/SPNS projects, UNDP, WHO, the International Medical Corps, the American Legacy Foundation, The International Catholic Migration Commission and the International Organization for Migration. She holds a masters and doctorate degrees in public health from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, and has completed Advanced Management & Leadership training at the Harvard Business School.