Deb Roy

Professor Deb Roy is a Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology, directing the MIT Center for Constructive Communication within the Communications domain. He earned a Bachelor of Applied Science in computer engineering from the University of Waterloo and a PhD in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT. Roy leads research in applied machine learning and human-machine system design, focusing on understanding large-scale social media ecosystems, designing communication tools and social networks, and developing human-AI systems that foster dialogue, listening, deliberation, and civic muscle. His work at the MIT Media Lab spans projects like RealTalk for Change Boston for inclusive public input, Facilimate for small-group conversation facilitation, Voice Anonymization for privacy in spoken language analysis, and others advancing civic technology, human-computer interaction, and social machines.

Roy's career includes Executive Director of the MIT Media Lab from 2019 to 2021, Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School from 2021 to 2022, co-founder and CEO of Bluefin Labs (acquired by Twitter in 2013), and Twitter’s Chief Media Scientist from 2013 to 2017. He is co-founder and unpaid CEO of Cortico, a nonprofit building conversation platforms to surface underheard voices and enable scalable dialogue networks. He serves on the boards of the Knight First Amendment Institute and FRONTLINE advisory council, and as a faculty associate at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, having previously served on the Knight Commission on Trust, Media, and Democracy and the Aspen Institute’s Commission on Information Disorder. An author of over 185 academic papers, his seminal publication “The Spread of True and False News Online” (Science, 2018, co-authored with Soroush Vosoughi and Sinan Aral) was a cover story and one of the year’s most influential works. Other key papers include “Computational Social Science” (Science, 2009) and “Affective Learning—A Manifesto” (BT Technology Journal, 2004). His TED talk “Birth of a Word” presented pioneering research on language development, influencing media analytics innovations.

Professional Email: dkroy@media.mit.edu