Rosalind Picard Facts for Kids

Quick facts for kids Rosalind Picard
Rosalind Picard at a discussion about science and technology.
Born	(1962-05-17) May 17, 1962 (age 63)
Alma mater	Georgia Institute of Technology (BS) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (SM, ScD)
Scientific career
Institutions	MIT Media Lab
Thesis	Texture modeling: Temperature effects on Markov/Gibbs random fields (1991)
Doctoral advisor	Alex Pentland Jae Soo Lim Sanjoy K. Mitter

Rosalind Wright Picard (born May 17, 1962) is an American scientist and inventor. She is a professor at the MIT Media Lab. She also started and leads the Affective Computing Research Group there. Dr. Picard is known for co-founding two companies, Affectiva and Empatica.

She has received many awards for her important work. In 2005, she became a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers for her work with images, videos, and affective computing. In 2019, she was chosen for the National Academy of Engineering. This is a very high honor for engineers. In 2021, she became a Fellow of the ACM for her work on health sensors. She also joined the National Academy of Inventors in 2021. In 2022, she won a big award, the International Lombardy Prize for Computer Science Research. She gave the prize money to help research on epilepsy and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

Dr. Picard is famous for starting a new area of computer science called affective computing. She wrote a book with the same name in 1997. This book explained why emotions are important for intelligence. It also showed how human emotions help people connect. Her work explores how robots and wearable devices could understand emotions. This research has also helped with autism studies. It has led to devices that help people understand different human emotions better.

Education and Research
Awards and Honors
Selected Works
- Books
- Articles
- Patents
See also

Education and Research

Rosalind Picard earned her first degree in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1984. She then went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). There, she earned her Master of Science degree in 1986. She also received her Doctor of Science degree in 1991. Both of these advanced degrees were in electrical engineering and computer science. Her doctoral research was about how textures change with temperature.

Since 1991, Dr. Picard has been a professor at the MIT Media Laboratory. She became a full professor in 2005. She leads the Affective Computing Research Group at MIT. This group creates tools and devices that can sense and understand human emotions. These systems help AI respond smartly to how people are feeling. For example, their research helps create better learning systems. It also helps people with autism communicate better.

Dr. Picard also works with other scientists like Sherry Turkle and Cynthia Breazeal. They study social robots. She has also done important work in digital image processing, pattern recognition, and wearable computers.

What is Affective Computing?

Dr. Picard's book, Affective Computing, explains her ideas. She believes that for computers to be truly smart and interact well with us, they need to understand emotions. They might even need to have and show emotions themselves.

Picard explains that humans naturally pick up on emotional clues. For example, a good teacher notices if a student is confused or excited. The teacher then changes how they teach. They know that feeling frustrated can make someone give up. So, they find ways to help the student stay motivated. Computers don't usually understand these emotional clues.

Imagine a robot in your kitchen while you are making breakfast. The robot greets you happily. But it notices your tired face, your quiet voice, smoke from the stove, and you slamming a pot. It figures out you are not having a good morning. The robot then changes its voice to be softer and stops being so cheerful. If you then say "Ow!" and pull your hand from the hot stove, the robot might not understand every word. But it would see your actions and emotions. It would know you are upset or hurt. In situations like this, robots need to understand human emotions to be truly helpful.

In 2009, Dr. Picard co-founded a company called Affectiva with Rana el Kaliouby. This company uses technology developed at MIT to understand emotions. In 2014, she also co-founded Empatica, Inc. This company makes wearable sensors. These sensors help people understand their body's changes related to emotions. Her team showed that these sensors could help find seizures that might be dangerous.

Helping with Autism

Dr. Picard has also done research to help people with autism. Her team created a device called an "emotional-social intelligence prosthesis" (ESP). This device helps people with autism see their own facial reactions. This teaches them about social cues from others. The device could correctly read eight different emotional states from faces and head movements about 65% of the time. She showed parts of this technology at a conference on wearable computers.

Understanding Emotions Better

Picard has ideas for improving how we study emotions. She suggests using new technologies to gather emotional information outside of a lab. Devices that measure heart rate or skin changes can be worn easily. This helps scientists observe emotional responses more accurately in real life. She believes that studying individuals closely is better than just looking at group averages. This way, unique emotional patterns can be understood.

Awards and Honors

Rosalind Picard has received many awards for her work:

Georgia Engineering Foundation Fellowship (1980-1983)
Society of Women Engineers: "The Outstanding Woman Engineering Student" (1981-1984)
National Science Foundation Fellow (1984)
AAUW "The Outstanding Georgia Institute of Technology Woman Graduate" (1984)
IAPR Pattern Recognition Society Best Paper Prize (1991)
GA Tech College of Engineering "Outstanding Young Engineering Alumni Award" (1995)
Assoc. of American Publishers, Inc. Computer Science Book Award (1997)
Fellow of IEEE (2005)
The New York Times "Best Ideas of the Year" (2006)
Popular Science Top Ten Inventions of 2011: A mirror that reads vital signs (2011)
Best Paper of the Decade, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems (2013)
Sigma Xi Walston Chubb Award for Innovation (2014)
Epilepsy Foundation Innovation Seal of Excellence (with Empatica) (2015)
CNN's 7 tech Superheroes to Watch in 2015
30 Most Innovative Women Professors (2016)
Red Dot Award, Product Design (with Empatica) (2016)
Association for Psychological Science Fellow (2017)
National Academy of Engineering (2019)
ACM Fellow (2021)

Selected Works

Books

J. Tao, T. Tan, and R. W. Picard (Eds.), Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction 2005.
A. Paiva, R. Prada, and R. W. Picard (Eds.), Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction 2007.

Articles

T. P. Minka and R.W. Picard (1997), "Interactive Learning Using a 'Society of Models,'" Pattern Recognition.
R. W. Picard, E. Vyzas & J. Healey, (2001), "Toward machine emotional intelligence: Analysis of affective physiological state," IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis & Machine Intelligence.
J. Healey and R. W. Picard (2005), "Detecting Stress During Real-World Driving Tasks Using Physiological Sensors," IEEE Trans. on Intelligent Transportation Systems.
M. E. Hoque, M. Courgeon, J.-C. Martin, B. Mutlu, R. W. Picard, "MACH: My Automated Conversation coacH", 15th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp), 2013.
Rosalind W. Picard, Matteo Migliorini, Chiara Caborni, Francesco Onorati, Giulia Regalia, Daniel Friedman, and Orrin Devinsky. "Wrist sensor reveals sympathetic hyperactivity and hypoventilation before probable SUDEP." Neurology (2017).

Patents

Dr. Picard holds many patents for her inventions, including:

"Method and Apparatus for Relating and Combining Multiple Images of the Same Scene or Object(s)" U.S. Patent 5,706,416 . (With Steve Mann.)
"Sensing and Display of Skin Conductivity" U.S. Patent 6,415,176 .
"Washable wearable biosensor" U.S. Patent 8,140,143 .
"Video recommendation based on affect" U.S. Patent 9,106,958 .
"Using affect within a gaming context" U.S. Patent 9,247,903 .
"Methods and Apparatus for Conversation Coach" U.S. Patent 9,691,296 .

Rosalind Picard facts for kids

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