Deb Roy is a professor of media arts and sciences at MIT, where he directs the MIT Center for Constructive Communication. He leads research in applied machine learning and human-machine system design with applications in understanding large scale social media ecosystems and designing communication tools and social networks. Roy is also co-founder and CEO of Cortico, a nonprofit social technology organization that develops and operates a conversation platform designed to surface under-heard voices and enable deep systematic listening. Previously, Roy has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, executive director of the MIT Media Lab, and co-founder and CEO of BluefinLabs, a media analytics company that analyzed the interactions between television and social media at scale. His widely viewed TED talk, Birth of a Word, presents his research on his son’s language development that led to new ideas in media analytics, while his 2021 talk envisions a new kind of social platform for a stronger democracy.