Rosalind Picard

Who is Rosalind Picard?

Rosalind W. Picard is Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT, director and also the founder of the Affective Computing Research Group at the MIT Media Lab, co-director of the Things That Think Consortium, and co-founder of Affectiva. In 2005, she was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Picard is credited with starting the branch of computer science known as affective computing with the publication of Affective Computing. This book described the importance of emotion in intelligence, the vital role human emotion communication has to relationships between people, and the possible effects of emotion recognition by robots and wearable computers. Her work in this field has led to an expansion into autism research and developing devices that could help humans recognize nuances in human emotions.