Rana el Kaliouby, Ph.D., is Co-Founder and C.E.O. of M.I.T. spin-off Affectiva, the pioneer in artificial emotional intelligence (Emotion AI), the next frontier of AI. A Muslim-American computer scientist and entrepreneur, el Kaliouby is on a mission to humanize technology, building next-generation interfaces — ones that are conversational, perceptual and can truly understand humans. She leads the company’s award-winning AI software that can understand complex and nuanced emotions and cognitive states from face and voice, using deep learning and massive real-world data — more than 4 billion facial frames analyzed in 87 countries. Her technology is used by 25% of the Fortune Global 500 companies to test content and in other industries, including automotive, H.R. video recruitment and mental health. El Kaliouby is one of few women leading AI companies and has raised over $26 million in capital for Affectiva. Prior to founding Affectiva, she was as a research scientist at M.I.T. Media Lab where she spearheaded the applications of Emotion AI in a variety of fields, including mental health and autism research. A TED speaker and Co-Host of the PBS “NOVA Wonders” series, el Kaliouby was recently named to 2018 Fortune’s 40 under 40, Thinkers50, and Bloomberg recognized her as one of three global business pioneers in 2017. She is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and member of the Partnership on AI, alongside founding companies Amazon, Apple, Google’s DeepMind and others. El Kaliouby holds a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in computer science from the American University in Cairo and a Ph.D. from the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge.