LIFETIME OF ACHIEVEMENT
Today Deputy CEO of Smart Eye , leading scientist and entrepreneur Rana el Kaliouby grew the company she co-founded , Affectiva , to be a leading AI innovator
Scientist , entrepreneur , angel investor , author , and AI thought leader Rana el Kaliouby is an Egyptian-American Scientist who co-founded Affectiva , a software company that built AI with an understanding of human emotions , cognitive states , activities and the objects people use .
Dedicated to the ethical development and deployment of AI , el Kaliouby is part of the Partnership of AI and the World Economic Forum ’ s Council of Young Global Leaders , driven by her passion for advocating for standards that ensure data privacy and mitigate both data and algorithmic bias .
A leader in the field of AI , el Kaliouby was Co-founder and CEO of Affectiva – an MIT spin-off and category-defining AI company – before it was acquired by Smart Eye in June 2021 , and created the category of Emotion AI and grew the company to be a leading AI innovator . Today , she serves as its Deputy CEO .
Prior to founding Affectiva , she was a research scientist at MIT Media Lab where she spearheaded the applications of emotion recognition technology in a variety of fields , including mental health and autism research .
As el Kaliouby explained in an interview with Forbes , the idea being Affectiva came from her experiences communicating through technology .
“ My education and career pursuits led me to Cambridge and later MIT , which meant I spent a lot of time in front of devices communicating with family back home ,” she explained .
“ There was very little face-to-face interaction and what struck me is that , although I was in constant touch with family and friends through technology , it was almost impossible to have any idea what was going on with my loved ones from an emotional and mental standpoint .
“ It became clear to me that the majority of our communication is conveyed through non-verbal cues : facial expressions , tone of voice , and body language . But , for the most part , those signals are lost when we ’ re on our smartphones and other devices .
“ When I got deeper into my research in computer science and AI , it became obvious that technology has a lot of cognitive
RANA EL KALIOUBY
TITLE : CO-FOUNDER & CEO COMPANY : SMARTEYE LOCATION : UNITED STATES
A pioneer in Emotion AI , Rana el Kaliouby , Ph . D ., is Deputy CEO at Smart Eye and formerly , CoFounder and CEO of Affectiva , an MIT spin-off and category defining AI company . Rana realised a successful exit for Affectiva in June 2021 when the company was acquired by Smart Eye , where she has teamed with Martin Krantz , Smart Eye ’ s CEO , to scale the company to a global AI powerhouse . aimagazine . com 21