1. Rana El Kaliouby – Research Scientist

“For as long as I remember, I have been fascinated by people’s ability to sense and make sense of themselves and others, and the important role this plays in how we connect to and communicate with others.” Rana El Kaliouby (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2008).

Dr. Rana El Kaliouby, a research scientist originally from the Middle East, is a leader in human emotion-sensing mechanisms. Her research is aimed at helping people with autism that aren’t able to recognize social cues and body language (Nasr, 2006). El Kaliouby does this by creating small cameras that capture and identify the facial cues from others, which sends a signal to a hand-held computer with image-recognition software (Biever, 2006). This helps the camera-wearer to understand other people.

This is no easy task. In order to program a computer with the ability to recognize human emotions, El Kaliouby trains it by showing the program “more than 100 8-second video clips of actors expressing particular emotions. The software picks out movements of the eyebrows, lips and nose, and tracks heard movements such as tilting, nodding, shaking, which it then associates with the emotion the actor was showing” (Biever, 2006). This research has had such good results, that El Kaliouby is now also using images from movies and webcams. She says that she uses a lot of programming software, email, and Skype in this research (personal communication, July 10, 2009).

Dr. El Kaliouby, who grew up in Kuwait, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates; began her academic career at The American University in Cairo where she received her Bachelors degree in Computer Science, Electronics, and Business Administration. She also earned her Masters degree at The American University in Cairo, which was also in Computer Science. El Kaliouby then went on to the University of Cambridge for her Doctorate in Computer Laboratory. Today she is a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2008).

All of her hard work has paid off. Today, El Kaliouby is the president and co-founder of Affectiva, a company created to commercialize her research and technologies on “affect-sensing devices,” which is what El Kaliouby calls her cameras. Her main goal with this company is to get the technology to those who need it, i.e. those with autism (R. El Kaliouby, personal communication, July 10, 2009).

Dr. El Kaliouby has been recognized for her extraordinary work by various institutions. Of course, her universities have honored her with many awards and fellowships.  In 2006, she was the recipient of the Gold Award from the Global Women and Inventors Network of the Higher Education & Learning Institutes (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2008). The progress El Kaliouby has made in the world of emotional recognition devices is revolutionary. Others can now use her methods to create other types of computers and mechanisms to further computer technology.

Being a woman in a man’s world makes El Kaliouby’s work even more impressive. Women are a minority in the fields of science and technology, and she wants that to change. In a personal interview, when asked if she has made efforts to open up the world of science and technology to females, El Kaliouby states “I am committed to this.” She was deeply involved in creating Women@CL, a UK initiative with goals of expanding women’s roles in the fields of computer research and academia. Also, on top of her position at MIT, El Kaliouby works as an adjunct Faculty at The American University in Cairo, where she mentors and encourages women to pursue research in computer science and technology (personal communication, July 10, 2009).

Biever, C (2006). Please stop me if I’m boring you. New Scientist, 190(2545), 30.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  (2008). Rana El Kaliouby Biography. MIT Media Lab. Retrieved July 13, 2009, from http://web.media.mit.edu/~kaliouby/

Nasr, S. (2006). Help for autism. 77 Mass Ave, 5(109), M9.