Akane Sano is an Associate Professor at Rice University, Department of Electrical Computer Engineering, Computer Science, and Bioengineering. She directs the Computational Wellbeing Group and is a member of the Rice Digital Health Initiatives and the Ken Kennedy Institute.

Her research includes data science, machine learning, and human-centered intelligent systems for health and wellbeing and spans in the field of affective computing, ubiquitous and wearable computing, and biobehavioral sensing and analysis/modeling. Her research targets (1) the analysis and modeling of human ambulatory multimodal time series data including physiological, biological, social, and behavioral data for measuring, predicting, improving, and understanding human physiology and behavior, clinical outcomes, and human factors such as health, wellbeing, and performance and (2) development of human-centered computational tools, systems, and algorithms for health, wellbeing, and performance.

She received her PhD at MIT Media Lab, and her MEng and BEng at Keio University, Japan. Before she joined Rice University, she was a Research Scientist in Affective Computing Group at MIT Media Lab, and a visiting scientist/lecturer at People-Aware Computing Lab, Cornell University. Before she came to the US, she was a researcher/engineer at Sony Corporation focusing on wearable computing, intelligent systems, and human/computer interaction.