Alex Paul "Sandy" Pentland (born 1951) is an American computer scientist, HAI Fellow at Stanford, Toshiba Professor at MIT, and serial entrepreneur.

Pentland is one of the most cited authors in computer science[1] with an h-index of 155, [2] is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, co-led the World Economic Forum discussion in Davos[3] that led to the EU privacy regulation GDPR, and was one of the UN Secretary General's "Data Revolutionaries" that helped forge the transparency and accountability mechanisms in the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.

He also founded the MIT Media Lab Entrepreneurship Program[7] which creates ventures to take cutting-edge technologies into the real world, was Academic Director of the Data-Pop Alliance,[8] and co-founder of Imagination In Action[9] which bring world-changing inventors together with leaders of governments and companies.

[17] More recent companies include Ginger.io (mental health services), CogitoCorp.com (AI coaching for interaction management), SCRT.network (Web3 confidential smart contracts), Wise Systems (delivery planning and optimization), Sila Money (stable bank and stablecoin), Akoya (secure, privacy-preserving financial interactions), FortifID (digital identity), Metha.ai (microbiome interventions for GHG reduction and health), and Array Insights (federated medical data analytics).

They argued that a living lab represents a user-centric research methodology for sensing, prototyping, validating and refining complex solutions in multiple and evolving real life contexts.