Frida Polli, a neuroscientist, entrepreneur, investor and inventor known for her groundbreaking contributions on the intersection of behavioral science and artificial intelligence, is MIT's latest visiting innovation scientist for the 2024-25 academic 12 months. She is the primary visiting scholar in innovation to be housed on the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing.
Polli began her profession in academic neuroscience with a give attention to multimodal brain imaging related to health and disease. She was a member of the Psychiatric Neuroimaging Group at Mass General Brigham and Harvard Medical School. She then joined MIT's Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences as a postdoctoral fellow, where she worked with John Gabrieli, the Grover Hermann Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.
Her research has been recognized with quite a few awards, including a Young Investigator Award from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation. She is the creator of over 30 peer-reviewed articles with notable publications in , in and in . She transitioned from academia to entrepreneurship by completing her MBA at Harvard Business School (HBS) as a Robert Kaplan Life Science Fellow. During this time, she also won the Life Sciences Track and Audience Choice Award on the 2010 MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition as a member of Aukera Therapeutics.
After HBS, Polli launched pymetrics, which leveraged advances in cognitive science and machine learning to develop analytics-driven decision-making and performance improvement software for the human capital sector. She holds several patents for the technology developed at pymetrics, which she co-founded in 2012 and led as CEO until her successful exit in 2022. Pymetrics was a technology pioneer and World Economic Forum Global Innovator, an Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Company and Forbes Artificial Intelligence 50 Company. Polli and Pymetrics also played a critical role within the passage of the nation's first algorithmic bias law – New York's Automated Employment Decision Tools Act – which went into effect in July 2023.
Polli returns to MIT as a visiting scholar in innovation, working closely with Sendhil Mullainathan, the Peter de Florez Professor within the Departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Economics and a senior researcher within the Information and Decision Systems Laboratory. With Mullainathan, she is working to bring together a broad range of college, students, and postdocs across MIT to handle concrete problems People and algorithms overlapto develop a brand new subfield of computer science specifically for behavioral science and to coach the following generation of scientists in these two areas to be bilingual.
“Sometimes you get lucky, and sometimes you get disproportionately lucky. Frida has successfully developed in all areas where we wish to have an effect – in science, in civil society and out there. She combines a startup mentality with an abiding interest in positive social impact while with the ability to make sure the form of mental rigor that MIT requires. It’s an exceptionally rare combination, we’re very lucky to have it,” says Mullainathan.
“People are increasingly interacting with algorithms, often with poor results, because most algorithms are usually not designed for human interaction,” says Polli. “We will give attention to developing algorithms that work synergistically with humans. Only such algorithms might help us address major societal challenges within the areas of education, healthcare, poverty, etc..”
Polli was recognized as one among the Top 100 Female Founders in 2019, followed by inclusion within the Top 100 Most Influential Women in 2020 and inclusion within the list of 100 Most Brilliant Women in AI Ethics in 2024. Her work has been featured by major media outlets like , , , , , , and highlighted
Beyond her role at pymetrics, in 2023 she founded Alethia AI, a corporation focused on promoting transparency in technology, and in 2024 founded Rosalind Ventures, dedicated to investing in female founders in science and healthcare. She can also be a consultant on the Buck Institute's Center for Healthy Aging in Women.
“I’m pleased, Dr. To welcome Polli back to MIT. As a bilingual expert in behavioral science and AI, she is an ideal fit for the faculty. Her entrepreneurial background makes her a superb first visiting scholar in innovation,” says Dan Huttenlocher , dean of the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and Henry Ellis Warren Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
