Deb Roy

Deb Roy directs the MediaLab’s Cognitive Machines group and chairs the academic program in Media Arts and Sciences at MIT.

A native of Canada, he received his bachelor of computer engineering from the University of Waterloo in 1992 and his PhD in cognitive science from MIT in 1999. He joined the MIT faculty in 2000 and was named Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences in 2003.

Deb studies how children learn language, and designs machines that learn to communicate in human-like ways. He has taken a personal approach to his research, installing 11 fish-eye cameras and 14 microphones to record every waking minute of his young child’s home life. He has pioneered new data-driven methods for analyzing and modeling human linguistic and social behaviour. Deb has authored numerous scientific papers on artificial intelligence, cognitive modeling, human-machine interaction, data mining and information visualization, and has lectured extensively for both scientific and general audiences. Deb’s research is frequently featured in publications like WIRED, National Geographic and Science.