American computer scientist Ray Kurzweil is one of the most prominent inventors and futurists of this century. His scientific predictions have mostly been accurate. An MIT alumnus, Kurzweil is known for his diverse inventions, such as the CCD flat-bed scanner, the first print-to-speech reading machine aimed for the blind, the first omni-font OCR system, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the first musical synthesizer able to recreate original musical instruments, and the first large-vocabulary speech recognition meant for the commercial market. In the past, he also tried using technology to develop financial markets and to create art and poetry. He has also penned numerous books, including several bestsellers, on topics such as the future of human-AI interaction, longevity, and health. His countless awards and honors include a National Medal and a Technical Grammy award. He is married to a psychologist and is the father of two children.