Tanzeem Choudhury

Timeline

1. 1975–2004

   The sociometer at MIT

   Born in Bangladesh in 1975, she completes a B.S. in electrical engineering at the University of Rochester and an M.S. at the MIT Media Lab in 1997, then a Ph.D. there in 2004 under Sandy Pentland. The thesis, Sensing and Modeling Human Networks, builds the sociometer, a wearable sensor that measures face-to-face interaction.

2. 2003–2011

   Intel Research and Dartmouth

   Research at Intel Research Seattle runs from 2003 to 2008. She serves as an assistant professor of computer science at Dartmouth College from 2008 to 2011 and directs the People-Aware Computing group, which develops machine learning techniques for systems that reason about everyday human activities. Technology Review names her to the 2008 TR35, and she receives the NSF CAREER award in 2009.

3. 2011

   Associate professor at Cornell

   She becomes an associate professor of information science at Cornell in 2011. The work centers on systems that reason about human activities, interactions, and social networks with mobile sensors in everyday real-world environments.

4. 2013–2015

   MoodRhythm and HealthRhythms

   Her team wins the $100,000 Heritage Open mHealth Challenge in 2013 with MoodRhythm, a phone app that monitors sleep and social patterns for people with bipolar disorder. With Ellen Frank and Mark Matthews, she starts HealthRhythms in 2015, and the company tests a platform that applies machine learning and predictive analytics to behavior measured on phones.

5. 2020

   Predicting schizophrenia relapse

   In 2020, papers from her Cornell Tech lab show that passive smartphone data, including movement, ambient sound, and sleep, can help predict schizophrenic relapse. The studies use encoder-decoder neural networks and multitask learning to predict symptoms from behavioral rhythms.

6. 2021–2022

   ACM Fellow and SIGCHI Academy

   The Association for Computing Machinery names her a 2021 Fellow for contributions to mobile systems for behavioral sensing and health interventions. Ubicomp 10-year Impact Awards come in 2016 and in 2022, and the ACM SIGCHI Academy inducts her in 2022.

7. Since February 2026

   Chief of Health Innovation

   In February 2026, Cornell Tech appoints her Chief of Health Innovation after five years as director of the Health Tech Hub at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute. She remains the Roger and Joelle Burnell Professor in Integrated Health and Technology and directs People-Aware Computing, which creates wearables and multi-modal AI systems to measure health behaviors.