Sandra Matz

Sandra Matz is the Lulu Chow Wang Professor of Business at Columbia Business School and the author of the book Mindmasters: The Data-Driven Science of Predicting and Changing Human Behavior.

As a computational social scientist with a background in psychology and computer science, Dr. Matz studies human behavior by uncovering the hidden relationships between our digital footprints and our inner mental lives. Her goal is to make data relatable and help individuals, businesses and policy makers use data in more effective and ethical ways

Over the last ten years Dr. Matz has published more than fifty academic papers in the world’s leading peer-reviewed journals, and her work has frequently been covered by many major news outlets, including the Economist, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Business Insider. In addition, she has shared her findings with business leaders, policymakers, and the broader public through op-eds, keynote speeches, podcasts, TV appearances, and consulting work.

Dr. Matz has won numerous awards for her research and teaching, including the SAGE Early Career Trajectory Award for social and personality psychologists; Poets and Quants’ Best 40-Under-40 MBA professors; Capital Magazine’s Young Elite Top 40 Under 40; World Frontiers Forum Young Pioneers; Pacific Standard Magazine’s Top 30 Thinkers Under 30; and DataIQ’s 100 Most Influential People in Data.

B.Sc, Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg (Germany); Ph.D., University of Cambridge