Curtis Wong is Principal Researcher focusing on interaction, media, and visualization technologies. He has authored more than 45 patents pending in areas such as interactive television, media browsing, visualization, search, gaming and learning. He is also co-author of Microsoft's 5,000th patent in 2006 and 10,000th patent in 2009. He and his collaborators have built advanced prototypes which have influenced Microsoft products and have been featured in numerous executive keynotes on the future of computing.
He spends some of his time working with selected non-profit organizations to develop examples of next generation media such as his collaboration with WGBH Frontline to produce The Age of AIDS on the global AIDS pandemic and the broadband enhanced documentary Commanding Heights ~ The Battle for the World Economy, winning a British Academy Award and nominated for the first interactive TV Emmy.
His most recent project was the WorldWide Telescope www.worldwidetelescope.org featuring the largest collection of the highest resolution ground and space based imagery ever assembled into a single learning environment inspiring millions of kids around the world to explore and understand the Universe.
Prior to Microsoft in 1997, Curtis was Director of Intel Productions where he conceived and developed www.artmuseum.net the first Broadband blockbuster art museum exhibition network on the Web. Curtis was also responsible for creation of the first enhanced digital television program broadcast in the US - The Poetry of Structure accompanying the broadcast of the Ken Burns film Frank Lloyd Wright. Prior to Intel, Curtis was General Manager of Corbis Productions where he was responsible for the creation of a critically acclaimed series of CD-ROM's including: A Passion for Art , Critical Mass, FDR and Leonardo da Vinci. Before Corbis, Curtis was producer for the Voyager Company where he was responsible for Multimedia Beethoven and Amanda Stories – two of the first ten multimedia CD-ROM’s for the PC as well as a number of award winning feature films for the Criterion Collection.
Curtis has served on the board of trustees for the Seattle Art Museum, the Rhode Island School of Design, the Advisory Boards for PBS Kids in Washington D.C., Ovation - The Arts Network, PBS Online, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Strategic Planning Steering Committee for the National Constitution Center, the Canadian Film Centre, the American Film Institute, and the Barnes Foundation. He is a voting member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (Emmys), a member of the American Astronomical Society. Curtis is included in Richard Saul Wurman's book, Who's Really Who: 1000 Most Creative Individuals in the USA as well as Interactive Week’s roster of “the 50 most powerful people in the interactive industry.”
- Steven Drucker, Curtis Wong, Asta Roseway, Steve Glenner, and Steve De Mar, Photo-triage: Rapidly annotating your digital photographs, no. MSR-TR-2003-99, December 2003
- Jim Gemmell, Gordon Bell, Roger Lueder, Steven M. Drucker, and Curtis Wong, MyLifeBits: fulfilling the Memex vision, in ACM Multimedia, Association for Computing Machinery, Inc., December 2002
