A Conversation with Dr. Rana el Kaliouby, Author of ‘Girl Decoded’
Fri, Apr 16, 2021 12:00 noon - 1:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time (UTC-4)
Register here.
Join us for a conversation with Dr. Rana el Kaliouby, Author of “Girl Decoded”, and CEO of Affectiva.
About this Event
Join us for a conversation with a highly inspirational and influential Author and CEO, Dr. Rana el Kaliouby. Get a chance to speak to someone who’s done it all, learn about her journey as a woman in tech and STEM. Learn a thing or two about her pivotal experiences and how she had overcome the hurdles women constantly face in Science and how we can do more to help pave the way for young aspiring generations of scientists. Get inspired and motivated by her stories!
About Dr. Rana el Kaliouby:
A pioneer in Emotion AI, Rana el Kaliouby, Ph.D., is Co-Founder and CEO of Affectiva, and author of the newly released book Girl Decoded: A Scientist’s Quest to Reclaim Our Humanity by Bringing Emotional Intelligence to Technology. A passionate advocate for humanizing technology, ethics in AI and diversity, Rana has been recognized on Fortune’s 40 Under 40 list and as one of Forbes’ Top 50 Women in Tech. Rana is a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and a Young Presidents’ Organization member, and co-hosted a PBS NOVA series on AI. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and a Post Doctorate from MIT.
About her book:
In a captivating memoir, an Egyptian-American visionary and scientist provides an intimate view of her personal transformation as she follows her calling – to humanize our technology and how we connect with one another.
Rana el Kaliouby is a rarity in both the tech world and her native Middle East: a Muslim leader and CEO, a woman in charge in a field that is still overwhelmingly white and male. Growing up in Egypt and Kuwait, el Kaliouby was raised by a conservative father who valued tradition – yet also had high expectations for his daughters – and a mother who was one of the first female computer programmers in the Middle East. Even before el Kaliouby broke ground as a scientist, she broke the rules of what it meant to be an obedient daughter and, later, an obedient wife to pursue her own daring dream.
After earning her PhD at Cambridge, el Kaliouby, now the divorced mother of two, moved to America to pursue her mission to humanize technology before it dehumanizes us. The majority of our communication is conveyed through non-verbal cues: facial expressions, tone of voice, body language. But that communication is lost when we interact with others through our smartphones and devices. The result is a digital universe that’s emotion blind. To combat our fundamental loss of emotional intelligence online, she co-founded Affectiva, the pioneer in the new field of Emotion AI, allowing our technology to understand humans the way we understand one another. Girl Decoded chronicles Rana el Kaliouby’s journey from a “nice Egyptian girl” to a woman carving her own path as she revolutionizes technology. But decoding herself – learning to express and act on her own emotions–would prove to be the biggest challenge of all.
This event is organized by the following organizations:
HGWISE (Harvard Graduate Women in Science), with special thanks to our sponsor: Harvard GSC
Dartmouth GWISE (Graduate Women in Science and Engineering)
gwaMIT (Graduate Womxn at MIT)
NE GWiSE (New England Graduate Women in Science and Engineering)
Special thanks to Iulia Nandrea-Miller, Executive Assistant to Dr. Kaliouby for helping us bring this event together!
