Alexander Wissner-Gross

Dr. Alexander D. Wissner-Gross is an award-winning scientist, inventor, and entrepreneur. He serves as an Institute Fellow at the Harvard University Institute for Applied Computational Science and as a Research Affiliate at the MIT Media Laboratory. He has received 115 major distinctions, authored 16 publications, been granted 22 issued, pending, and provisional patents, and founded, managed, and advised 4 technology companies, 1 of which has been acquired. In 1998 and 1999, respectively, he won the U.S.A. Computer Olympiad and the Intel Science Talent Search. In 2003, he became the last person in MIT history to receive a triple major, with bachelors in Physics, Electrical Science and Engineering, and Mathematics, while graduating first in his class from the MIT School of Engineering. In 2007, he completed his Ph.D. in Physics at Harvard, where his research on programmable matter, ubiquitous computing, and machine learning was awarded the Hertz Doctoral Thesis Prize. A popular TED speaker, his talks have been viewed more than 1.7 million times and translated into 26 languages. His work has also been featured in more than 150 press outlets worldwide including The New York Times, CNN, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek.