Monica is a 21st century polymath leading the way for an ethical, sustainable, and smart future with artificial intelligence (AI) as a Business Executive, Brain Scientist, Entrepreneur, Educator, Public Speaker, and Writer. She takes a human-centric approach to the development and application of emerging smart technologies and advocates interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, and entrepreneurial integration to drive innovation and connected communities. Monica is the co-founder and CEO of the Institute for Human Intelligence (IfHI). Her work for IfHI uniquely merges deep subject matter expertise across various fields critical to the development and use of AI.

Prior to helming IfHI, Monica co-founded the consulting company La Petite Noiseuse Productions (LPNP) in 2014. As CEO and Chief Science Officer at LPNP Monica created a novel R&D platform using the arts to empirically investigate critical questions on human intelligence such as humans’ capacity to adapt to ever-changing and multisensory, multi-agent environments. Her research insights led to advancing multiple projects and endeavors across data management and analytics, technology business solutions, brain-inspired computing, and AI development.

Prior to co-founding LPNP, Monica worked in the biotech industry as director of business development for various biotechnology companies. During that time she applied her scientific and storytelling acumen to bridge the business of healthcare with rising digital challenges.

A firm believer in experiential and cross-disciplinary learning within STEMM, Monica has pioneered since 2009 unique and popular Science-Tech-Design-Policy-Ethics courses as teaching faculty at Johns Hopkins University. Monica is currently a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Cognitive Science of the Krieger School of Arts & Sciences. She is also faculty in the Artificial Intelligence Program – Engineering for Professionals of the Whiting School of Engineering, and holds a Faculty Joint Appointment in the Department of Neurology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She has been a program committee member since 2015 for IS&T’s Human Vision & Electronic Imaging international conference. Monica has also been a subject editor for the Social Sciences & Humanities Open Journal of Elsevier, Oxford, UK.

Monica’s accolades include receiving the prestigious Outstanding Recent Graduate Award from the Office of the President and Alumni Association of the Johns Hopkins University and being named one of Baltimore’s Top 10 BioHealth Startup CEOs by the Business of Biotech in 2019, becoming a Fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar in Salzburg, Austria as well as being named a millennial leader of the BioHealth Capital Region (MD, DC, VA) by BioHealth Innovation, Inc. in 2018. In 2016 the Imagination Institute of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania recognized her as a particularly imaginative polymath.

Monica is a sought-after plenary and keynote speaker, panelist, consultant, adviser, and guest in various local, national, and international venues. Her work has been presented and published in a range of formats for various audiences –e.g. scientific papers, articles, abstracts, reports, posters, op-eds, presentations, workshops, novels, plays, videos, photographs, news/press releases, radio, TV.

Monica earned BA degrees in Psychology and French, and a MA and PhD in Cognitive Science, all from Johns Hopkins University, a Certificate of Art in Photography from Maryland Institute College of Art, and completed her postdoctoral research fellowship at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She also has a Graduate Certificate in International Studies from Johns Hopkins University’s School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS).