Frida Polli, a neuroscientist, entrepreneur, investor, and inventor recognized for her modern contributions on the crossroads of behavioral science and synthetic intelligence, is MIT’s new visiting innovation scholar for the 2024-25 educational yr. She is the primary visiting innovation scholar to be housed throughout the MIT Schwarzman Faculty of Computing.
Polli started her profession in educational neuroscience with a deal with multimodal mind imaging associated to well being and illness. She was a fellow on the Psychiatric Neuroimaging Group at Mass Normal Brigham and Harvard Medical Faculty. She then joined the Division of Mind and Cognitive Sciences at MIT as a postdoc, the place she labored with John Gabrieli, the Grover Hermann Professor of Well being Sciences and Expertise and a professor of mind and cognitive sciences.
Her analysis has received many awards, together with a Younger Investigator Award from the Mind and Habits Analysis Basis. She authored over 30 peer-reviewed articles, with notable publications within the Proceedings of the Nationwide Academy of Sciences, the Journal of Neuroscience, and Mind. She transitioned from academia to entrepreneurship by finishing her MBA on the Harvard Enterprise Faculty (HBS) as a Robert Kaplan Life Science Fellow. Throughout this time, she additionally received the Life Sciences Observe and the Viewers Selection Award within the 2010 MIT $100K Entrepreneurship competitors as a member of Aukera Therapeutics.
After HBS, Polli launched pymetrics, which harnessed developments in cognitive science and machine studying to develop analytics-driven decision-making and efficiency enhancement software program for the human capital sector. She holds a number of patents for the know-how developed at pymetrics, which she co-founded in 2012 and led as CEO till her profitable exit in 2022. Pymetrics was a World Financial Discussion board’s Expertise Pioneer and International Innovator, an Inc. 5000’s Quickest-Rising firm, and Forbes Synthetic Intelligence 50 firm. Polli and pymetrics additionally performed a pivotal position in passing the first-in-the-nation algorithmic bias legislation — New York’s Automated Employment Determination Software legislation — which went into impact in July 2023.
Making her return to MIT as a visiting innovation scholar, Polli is collaborating intently with Sendhil Mullainathan, the Peter de Florez Professor within the departments of Electrical Engineering and Laptop Science and Economics, and a principal investigator within the Laboratory for Data and Determination Techniques. With Mullainathan, she is working to convey collectively a broad array of college, college students, and postdocs throughout MIT to handle concrete issues the place people and algorithms intersect, to develop a brand new subdomain of pc science particular to behavioral science, and to coach the following era of scientists to be bilingual in these two fields.
“Typically you get fortunate, and typically you get unreasonably fortunate. Frida has thrived in every of the sides we’re trying to have affect in — academia, civil society, and {the marketplace}. She combines a startup mentality with an abiding curiosity in constructive social affect, whereas able to guaranteeing the form of mental rigor MIT calls for. It’s an exceptionally uncommon mixture, one we’re unreasonably fortunate to have,” says Mullainathan.
“Persons are more and more interacting with algorithms, usually with poor outcomes, as a result of most algorithms should not constructed with human interaction in thoughts,” says Polli. “We’ll deal with designing algorithms that can work synergistically with individuals. Solely such algorithms can assist us tackle massive societal challenges in schooling, well being care, poverty, et cetera.”
Polli was acknowledged as one in all Inc.’s High 100 Feminine Founders in 2019, adopted by being named to Entrepreneur’s High 100 Highly effective Ladies in 2020, and to the 2024 listing of 100 Sensible Ladies in AI Ethics. Her work has been highlighted by main retailers together with The New York Occasions, The Wall Avenue Journal, The Monetary Occasions, The Economist, Fortune, Harvard Enterprise Overview, Quick Firm, Bloomberg, and Inc.
Past her position at pymetrics, she based Alethia AI in 2023, a corporation targeted on selling transparency in know-how, and in 2024, she launched Rosalind Ventures, devoted to investing in ladies founders in science and well being care. She can be an advisor on the Buck Institute’s Heart for Wholesome Ageing in Ladies.
“I am delighted to welcome Dr. Polli again to MIT. As a bilingual skilled in each behavioral science and AI, she is a pure match for the faculty. Her entrepreneurial background makes her a terrific inaugural visiting innovation scholar,” says Dan Huttenlocher, dean of the MIT Schwarzman Faculty of Computing and the Henry Ellis Warren Professor of Electrical Engineering and Laptop Science.
