Ahmad Abdulkader
Ahmad Abdulkader earned a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Cairo University, Egypt in 1990, a Masters in Electrical Engineering from Cairo University, Egypt in 1993, a Masters in Computer Engineering from McMaster University, Canada in 1995, and a Masters in Computer Science from University of Washington in 1999. He has done research in Document Analysis and Recognition, Neural Networks, Machine Learning, and Signal Processing. He started Contact Innovations, a company in Toronto, Canada that specializes in Automatic Check Processing, which still exists. In 1997, he started in the Handwriting Recognition Group at Microsoft. He is the architect of the group nine patents awarded and has several publications in the Neural Networks and Machine Learning fields.

Richard Anderson
Richard Anderson is a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at University of Washington. His main research interests are Educational Technology, Computer Science Education, and Pen-based Computing. He has been at University of Washington since 1986. He spent the 2001–2002 academic year at Microsoft Research working with the Learning Sciences and Technology group where he started working on the Classroom Presenter project.

Akhtar Badshah
Akhtar Badshah is senior director of Microsoft Community Affairs, where he administers the company’s global community investment and employee programs. Among his responsibilities, Dr. Badshah manages Unlimited Potential, a global initiative to promote digital inclusion and increased access to technology skills training in underserved communities. Unlimited Potential focuses on improving lifelong learning for disadvantaged young people and adults by providing technology skills through community-based organizations around the world. Since May 2003, Microsoft has made grants of cash and software totaling nearly $50 million to more than 150 programs in 45 countries.

Dr. Badshah also oversees programs aimed at helping nonprofit organizations improve their effectiveness through increased technology capacity. This includes Microsoft’s signature relationships with organizations such as NPower and Boys & Girls Clubs of America. Prior to joining Microsoft, Dr. Badshah was the CEO and president of Digital Partners Foundation, a Seattle-area nonprofit organization whose mission is to utilize the digital economy to benefit the poor. At Digital Partners, he established the organization’s core programs in India, Africa and Latin America. His work included development of the Digital Partners Social Venture Fund, designed to support the expansion of IT-based anti-poverty efforts around the world, and the Digital Partners Social Enterprise Laboratory (SEL), an initiative that provides mentorship and seed money to entrepreneurs whose vision and business models use ICT to empower the poor and their underserved communities.

Dr. Badshah serves on the Advisory Board for the Development Gateway Project of the World Bank, World Links India, World Corp., Teachers without Borders and Datamation Foundation India. He has co-edited “Connected for Development—Information Kiosks for Sustainability,” and authored “Our Urban Future: New Paradigms for Equity and Sustainability” and several articles in international journals on ICT4D, megacities and sustainability, urban and community development, and housing. Dr. Badshah is a doctoral graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the former president of the Lambda Alpha International New Jersey Chapter, an honorary land economic society. He is very active in the Seattle area community and serves on various local committees.

Ricardo Baeza-Yates
Ricardo Baeza-Yates received the bachelor degree in Computer Science (CS) in 1983 from the University of Chile. Later, in 1985, he received also the M.Sc. in CS and the professional title in electrical engineering (EE). One year later, he obtained M.Eng. in EE from the same university. He received his PhD in CS from the University of Waterloo, Canada, in 1989, doing a six months post-doctoral position the same year. As a PhD student he won several scholarships including the Ontario Graduate scholarship. He came back to Chile as associate professor.

In 1992 he was elected president of the Chilean Computer Science Society (SCCC) until 1995, being elected again in for 1997–98. During 1993, he received the Organization of American States award for young researchers in exact sciences. In 1994 he received the award to the best engineering research in the last 4 years from the Institute of Engineers of Chile, and was invited by the U.S.A. Presidential Office for a one month scientific tour in that country. In 1996, he won a scholarship from the Education and Science Ministry of Spain to have a sabbatical year at the Polytechnic University of Catalunya. In 1997 with two Brazilian colleagues obtained the COMPAQ prize to the best Brazilian research article in CS.

He was then elected to the IEEE CS Board of Governors for the period 2002-04. In 2003 he was appointed to the Chilean Academy of Sciences, being the first person from computer science to achieve this position in Chile.

Currently he is a professor at the CS department of the University of Chile, where he was the chair in the periods 1993-95 and 2003-2004. He is also director of the Center for Web Research, a project funded by the Millennium Scientific Initiative of the Ministry of Planning in 2002. In his involvement as professional volunteer, he was the president of CLEI (2001-04), a Latin American association of CS departments; and coordinated the Iberoamerican cooperation program in Electronics and Informatics (2000-04). His research interests include information retrieval, algorithms, and information visualization. He is co-author of the book Modern Information Retrieval, published in 1999 by Addison-Wesley, as well as co-author of the 2nd edition of the Handbook of Algorithms and Data Structures, Addison-Wesley, 1991; and co-editor of Information Retrieval: Algorithms and Data Structures, Prentice-Hall, 1992, between other publications in journals published by ACM, IEEE, SIAM, etc. He has been principal researcher of projects funded by the Chilean government and also cooperation programs with Argentina, Brazil, France, and Spain. He has been visiting professor or invited speaker at several conferences and universities all around the world, as well as referee of many journals, conferences, NSF, etc. He is a member of ACM, AMS, EATCS, IEEE (senior Member) & IEEE-CS, SIAM, and SCCC. According to ResearchIndex and scholar.google.com he has more than 1,500 citations, being the most cited researcher in CS working in Latin America, and among the 700 most cited CS authors.

Steven Bathiche
Steven Bathiche has been a member in the applied research group in the Microsoft Hardware division since 1999. He obtained a BS in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech and an MS in Bioengineering from the University of Washington. While in Graduate school he developed the Mothmobile, a hybrid robot that uses an insect as its control system via a neural electrical interface. One of his shipping products includes the Microsoft Freestyle Pro game pad, a gaming device that employs inertial sensors to deliver four degrees of freedom in control. Steve’s current work focuses on creating new classes of computers that push the boundaries of human to machine interaction; new form factors, novel sensing techniques, and interactions; mobile computing; and cutting edge display technology. He has been granted eight patents, six of which are in shipping products, and has 26 pending patents.

Patrick Baudich
Patrick Baudisch is a research scientist in the field of human-computer interaction at the Adaptive Systems and Interaction Research Group at Microsoft Research. His focus is on interaction techniques that help users interact with very large displays and visualization techniques that allow users to view large documents on small screen devices. While at Xerox PARC, Baudisch created focus plus context screens. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany.

http://patrickbaudisch.com/

Fran Berman
Dr. Fran Berman is Director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), holder of the High Performance Computing Endowed Chair in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at UC San Diego, and Fellow of the ACM. She is a pioneer and international leader in the areas of Grid Computing and Cyberinfrastructure, and has worked extensively in the areas of programming environments, adaptive middleware, scheduling, and performance prediction.

Dr. Berman is one of two founding principal investigators of the National Science Foundation-supported TeraGrid, former Director of the National Partnership for Advanced Computing Infrastructure, and is currently involved in building a national Cyberinfrastructure to enable science and engineering discovery. For her leadership and vision, Dr. Berman was recognized in 2004 as one of the top women in technology by BusinessWeek and as one of the top technologists by IEEE Spectrum. Dr. Berman lends a Cyberinfrastructure perspective to a variety of national groups and committees including the National Science Foundation’s Engineering Advisory Committee and the National Institutes of Health’s NIGMS Advisory Committee.

Alice Bodanzky
I have been studying design in ESDI/UERJ and stage design in a theatre university for almost four years. Since I love everything that is related to Art, such as cinema, theater, dance, exhibitions, etc, I am trying to focus my studies on the visual aspects and shapes of these activities. I have worked in a museum, in many plays and in fashion events. Another activity that complements my studying is traveling. I use to travel a lot as I like to experience the everyday life of different cultures and I believe this may help my career as a designer.

Jay Boisseau
After graduating with a degree in astronomy and physics from the University of Virginia in 1986, Jay Boisseau obtained his doctorate in astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin, where he specialized in modeling the dynamics of Type Ia supernovae using Cray vector supercomputers. While completing his doctoral research, Dr. Boisseau worked in user support at the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center (ARSC) in Fairbanks, Alaska. In 1996, he joined the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) to continue his career in high performance computing. At SDSC, Dr. Boisseau became an Associate Director and created the Scientific Computing Department, with groups specializing in performance optimization, performance modeling, parallel tools development, and Grid portals development. He led several major SDSC projects for the National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure (NPACI) and also led SDSC’s participation in the Department of Defense (DoD) Programming Environments and Training (PET) program. Dr. Boisseau also founded the IBM Scientific Computing User Group while at SDSC.

Dr. Boisseau returned to UT Austin in June 2001 to become the director of the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC). He is developing a strong research and development program at TACC while enhancing the computational capabilities and coordinating the development of a campus Grid. TACC is a resource partner in NPACI, so Dr. Boisseau continues to participate in that program as well as the DoD PET program. He also leads UT Austin’s involvement in the High Performance Computing Across Texas (HiPCAT) consortium. His current professional interests include performance characteristics of high-end computing systems and the development of Grid technologies for computational science.

Carlos Henrique de Brito Cruz
Carlos H. Brito Cruz graduated in EE from ITA (1978) and received a Doctorate in Physics from Unicamp (1983). He works in the study of ultrafast phenomena using femtosecond lasers. Prof. Brito Cruz worked at the University of Rome (Rome, It), AT&T Bell Labs (Holmdel, NJ) and Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris, France). He belongs to the faculty at the Physics Institute at Unicamp since 1982. Prof. Brito Cruz has been the Rector of the State University of Campinas, Unicamp, (Campinas, Brazil) from 2002 to 2005 and is now the Scientific Director for the State of São Paulo Foundation for the Support of Research, Fapesp.

A.J. Brush
A.J. Brush is a researcher in the Microsoft Research Community Technologies Group. Her main research interest is human-computer interaction with a focus on computer supported cooperative work. Her current projects include a building digital family calendar, exploring the use of social information to help people triage their e-mail, and studying roles in online communities using the Netscan system. A.J. graduated Summa cum Laude from Williams College and then earned her Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Washington.

/~ajbrush

Sailesh Chutani
Sailesh is the Director Worldwide University Relations at Microsoft Research where he is focused on partnering with universities in emerging areas of research and education to advance the state of the art. In his previous lives he worked on MSN TV where he spearheaded the revitalization and turnaround of a medium size business unit. Prior to that, he created a worldwide partner ecosystem of OEMs and ISVs capable of delivering solutions based on MSTV. He had stints at Oracle defining their XML and Internet strategy and representing the company in W3C standards, as well as at Hewlett-Packard labs doing research on problems of managing large scale distributed systems. He played a key role in starting up Transarc Corporation, which was a spin-off from CMU that commercialized distributed File Systems AFS/DFS and Encina distributed transaction processing system. He has a PhD from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Masters from UNC Chapel Hill, and a Bachelor’s from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. Sailesh enjoys mountaineering, backcountry skiing, long distance running, and being a juror in documentary film festivals.

Mary Czerwinski
Mary Czerwinski is a Senior Researcher and Manager of the Visualization and Interaction Research group at Microsoft Research. The group is responsible for studying and designing advanced technology and interaction techniques that leverage human capabilities across a wide variety of input and output channels. Mary’s primary research areas include spatial cognition, information visualization and task switching. Mary has been an affiliate assistant professor at the Department of Psychology, University of Washington since 1996. She has also held positions at Compaq Computer Corporation, Rice University, Lockheed Engineering and Sciences Corporation, and Bell Communications Research. She received a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Indiana University in Bloomington. Mary is active in the field of Human-Computer Interaction, publishing and participating in a wide number of conferences, professional venues and journals.

/users/marycz

Randall Davis
Randall Davis received his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth, graduating summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa in 1970, and a PhD from Stanford in artificial intelligence in 1976. In 1978 he joined the faculty of the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at MIT, where he is currently a Professor and a Research Director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He and his research group are developing advanced tools that permit natural multi-modal interaction with computers by creating software that understands users as they sketch, gesture, and talk.

Dr. Davis has been one of the seminal contributors to the field of knowledge-based systems. He was selected in 1984 as one of America’s top 100 scientists under the age of 40 by Science Digest. In 1990 he was named a Founding Fellow of the American Association for AI and in 1995 was elected to a two-year term as President of the Association. In 2003 he received MIT’s Frank E. Perkins Award for graduate advising. From 1995–1998 he served on the Scientific Advisory Board of the U.S. Air Force.

Dr. Davis has also been active in the area of intellectual property and software. In 1990 he served as expert to the Court in Computer Associates v. Altai, the case that produced the abstraction, filtration, comparison test for software copyright. He has served as an expert in a variety of cases involving software, including the investigation by the Department of Justice of the Inslaw matter, where he investigated allegations of copyright theft and cover-up by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the United States Customs Service, and the Defense Intelligence Agency. From 1998-2000 he served as the chairman of the National Academy of Sciences study on intellectual property rights and the information infrastructure entitled The Digital Dilemma: Intellectual Property in the Information Age, published by the National Academy Press in February, 2000.

Steven Drucker
Dr. Steven M. Drucker has been the lead researcher for the Next Media Research Group in Microsoft Research for the last four years where he has been looking at how the addition of user interaction transforms conventional media. He is particularly interested in database visualization for consumers or where art meets technology for user interfaces. While in the group, he has filed 30 patents on technologies as diverse as remotely operated personal video recorders, spectator oriented gaming, and new visualization techniques for media databases and published papers on information visualization and management.

Previously he was the lead researcher in the Virtual Worlds Group also in Microsoft Research. During his tenure there he helped architect a platform for multi-user virtual environments, filed an additional 12 patents, and published papers in subjects ranging from architectures for multi-user, multimedia systems to online social interaction. Before coming to Microsoft, he received his PhD from the Computer Graphics and Animation Group at the MIT Media Lab in May 1994. His thesis research was on intelligent camera control interfaces for graphical environments. Dr. Drucker graduated Magna Cum Laude with Honors in Neurosciences from Brown University and went on to complete his masters at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT doing research in robot learning.

His published papers have been in such areas as multi-user environments, online social interaction, hypermedia research, human and robot perceptual capabilities, robot learning, parallel computer graphics, and human interfaces for camera control.

/~sdrucker/

Mike Dunkle
Mike Dunkle joined Valve in 2000 after spending 10 years in senior marketing and business development positions within the semiconductor test and embedded software markets. At Valve, Mike is responsible for cybercafé operations, tournaments, educational licensing, and general business development. Mike holds a physics degree from the University of Puget Sound and is an avid soccer player and coach. When he is not at work you will find him spending the few extra hours he has on a pitch somewhere in the world.

Mike Dussault
Mike Dussault came to Valve from Monolith Productions where he was the lead engineer on Lithtech1 and Lithtech2 and worked on Shogo, NOLF, and Blood2. Previous to that, he worked at Zombie on a game called Locus.

Neil Enns
Neil Enns is a Lead Program Manager in the Visual Studio for Devices team at Microsoft. Prior to joining the Visual Studio team, he spent six years working on Windows Mobile technology such as Pocket PC and Smartphones.

Kyril Faenov
Kyril is Director of the High Performance Computing product unit in the Windows Server group, leading the technical computing product strategy and implementation at Microsoft. Prior to this role, Kyril held a number of positions including Director of Central Program Management for Windows Server, cofounder of a new distributed platform incubation project, executive staff member, competitive analysis lead, and a software developer in Windows networking. Kyril joined Microsoft in 1998 as the result of acquisition of Valence Research clustering startup he co-founded and lead to profitability. Kyril worked as a key technical member of two other clustering startups, as well as a software consultant for Intel on chipset performance simulation and embedded system development projects. Kyril holds BS and MS degrees in computer science with parallel systems and computation finance focus, as well as an MBA in Technology Management. Kyril is active in the Seattle entrepreneurship community as an advisor and an angel investor. Kyril lives in Seattle with his wife Lauren and in his spare time enjoys traveling, performing arts, kayaking, and scuba diving.

William H. Gates
William (Bill) H. Gates is chairman and chief software architect of Microsoft Corporation, the worldwide leader in software, services, and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. Microsoft had revenues of US$32.19 billion for the fiscal year ending June 2003 and employs more than 55,000 people in 85 countries and regions.

Born on Oct. 28, 1955, Gates grew up in Seattle with his two sisters. Their father, William H. Gates II, is a Seattle attorney. Their late mother, Mary Gates, was a schoolteacher, University Washington regent, and chairwoman of United Way International. Gates attended public elementary school and the private Lakeside School. There, he discovered his interest in software and began programming computers at age 13. In 1973, Gates entered Harvard University as a freshman, where he lived down the hall from Steve Ballmer, now Microsoft’s chief executive officer. While at Harvard, Gates developed a version of the programming language BASIC for the first microcomputer—the MITS Altair. In his junior year, Gates left Harvard to devote his energies to Microsoft, a company he had begun in 1975 with his childhood friend Paul Allen. Guided by a belief that the computer would be a valuable tool on every office desktop and in every home, they began developing software for personal computers. Gates’ foresight and his vision for personal computing have been central to the success of Microsoft and the software industry.

Under Gates’ leadership, Microsoft’s mission has been to continually advance and improve software technology, and to make it easier, more cost effective, and more enjoyable for people to use computers. The company is committed to a long-term view, reflected in its investment of more than $6.8 billion on research and development in the current fiscal year.

In 1999, Gates wrote Business @ the Speed of Thought, a book that shows how computer technology can solve business problems in fundamentally new ways. The book was published in 25 languages and is available in more than 60 countries. Business @ the Speed of Thought has received wide critical acclaim and was listed on the best-seller lists of the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and Amazon.com. Gates’ previous book, The Road Ahead, published in 1995, held the No. 1 spot on the New York Times’ bestseller list for seven weeks. Gates has donated the proceeds of both books to non-profit organizations that support the use of technology in education and skills development.

http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/bio.asp

Jim Gemmell
Jim Gemmell is a researcher in the Microsoft Research Media Presence Group at the Bay Area Research Center (BARC) in San Francisco. His current research focus is on personal lifetime storage, as architect of the MyLifeBits project and chair of the First ACM Workshop on Continuous Archival and Retrieval of Personal Experience (CARPE). Dr. Gemmell received his PhD from Simon Fraser University and his M. Math from the University of Waterloo. His research interests include personal media management, telepresence, and reliable multicast. He produced the online version of the ACM 97 conference and is a co-author of the PGM reliable multicast RFC. Dr. Gemmell serves on the editorial advisory board of Computer Communications.

/~JGemmell/

William Griswold
William Griswold is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. He received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Washington in 1991, and his BA in Mathematics from the University of Arizona in 1985. He was the Program Co-Chair for the 2005 International Conference on Software Engineering, and recently chaired the 2nd International Conference on Aspect Oriented Software Development. His research interests include software design, ubiquitous computing, educational technology, software evolution and design, and software tools. His current projects include the ActiveCampus ubiquitous computing project; WIISARD, Wireless Internet Information System for Medical Response in Disasters,; Ubiquitous Presenter, a Web-based extension to UW Classroom Presenter; and XPIs, an interface-based design method for aspect-oriented software development.

François Guimbretière
François Guimbretière is an assistant professor at the University of Maryland Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL). His current research interests include exploring how new technologies can be used to reduce the gap between the digital world and the paper world, designing and quantifying new pen-based command selection mechanisms such as FlowMenu, and understanding how new interaction and rendering techniques could help people understand and compare very large trees such as phylogenies. More information can be found at http://www.cs.umd.edu/~francois.

Tom Healy
Thomas E. Healy is lead program manager at External Research and Programs, Microsoft Research. In this role, he, along with his staff, manage a portfolio of programs, including university engagements in Latin America and India, the iCampus research alliance, the Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellowship program, and the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit. Tom has been at Microsoft Research for the past five years. Previous to joining Microsoft Research, he worked in the computer industry for 25 years focusing on the role technology plays in education. He has received a B.A. in Education from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and an M.S. in Organizational Development from Lesley University.

Ken Hinckley
Ken Hinckley is a research scientist at Microsoft Research. His interests span many areas of human-computer interaction including input devices, interaction techniques, sensors and sensing systems, mobile devices, and ubiquitous computing. For recent papers, see /Users/kenh/Default.htm.

Michael Isard
I received my D.Phil in computer vision from Oxford University in 1998, and I have worked for Microsoft Research in Silicon Valley since 2002. The majority of my research has been in the field of visual tracking and sequential filtering, and I helped to introduce particle filters to the computer vision community with the Condensation algorithm. More recently my interests have broadened to include distributed systems research, and I spent much of mid-2003 to early 2005 working closely with the MSN Search product group on the design and implementation of their V1 search engine. Current research projects cover a range from inference methods for Bayesian networks with applications in visual tracking and dense stereo estimation to programming models for large-scale distributed systems and many-core processor architectures.

Michael Jefferson
Michael is a producer and designer of stories and experiences. He has a Bachelors degree in communications from the University of Massachusetts and thirteen years experience creating content for broadcast television, streaming media, interactive television and the web. Highlights include a Super Bowl ad spot for the United Way, ESPN’s Wildlife Legacy series, The Webby Awards first interactive webcast, and a children’s interactive portrait of the city of San Francisco. In his “spare time,” Michael is a furniture designer and sculpture working in wood and metal. As a graduate student at ITP, he combines all interest in an exploration of new mediums and forms of storytelling. His most recent project, the SlumberLight, is a networked night-light designed to connect his great grandmother with his three-year-old son.

Takashi Kawashima
Born in Osaka, Japan in 1981, Takashi Kawashima is a designer and filmmaker living in Los Angeles. His work re-contextualizes commonplace items to create new awareness of the mundane.

Takashi was recently featured as a one of ten emerging artists in the March/April 2004 issue of RES magazine in an article entitled “Who’s Now/Who’s Next.” His work has been shown at a number of festivals in Japan, the United States, Canada, France, and UK, including the Los Angeles Intl’ Short Film Festival and Canon Digital Creators Contest. Takashi received his BA in Environmental Information with a Dean’s Award from Keio University in Japan, and is currently pursing his MFA in Design and Media Arts at UCLA.

Brian Keller
Brian Keller is product manager for Microsoft Visual Studio. This year, Brian is focused on fostering exciting partnerships and ecosystems around Microsoft’s new Visual Studio Express product line designed to make software programming more fun and approachable. Brian’s favorite Half-Life 2 weapon is the gravity gun, and he once modeled his high school auditorium as a map in Doom II.

Maria Klawe
Maria Klawe is currently Dean of Engineering and a professor of Computer Science at Princeton University. She moved to Princeton in January 2003 from the University of British Columbia where she served as Dean of Science from 1998 to 2002, Vice-President of Student and Academic Services from 1995 to 1998, and Head of the Department of Computer Science from 1988 to 1995. Prior to UBC, Maria spent eight years with IBM Research in California, and two years at the University of Toronto. She received her PhD (1977) and BSc (1973) in Mathematics from the University of Alberta.

Maria has made significant research contributions in several areas of mathematics and computer science including functional analysis, discrete mathematics, theoretical computer science, and interactive-multimedia for mathematics education. She was the founder and director of the EGEMS project, a collaborative project on the design and use of computer games in enhancing mathematics education for grades 4 to 9.

http://www.princeton.edu/~seasweb/dean/Klawe/Klawe.html

Kimberle Koile
Kimberle Koile is a Research Scientist at the MIT Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science Laboratory, and a Lecturer in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. She splits her time between teaching introductory CS courses, AI, and doing research in the AIRE (Agent-based Intelligent Reactive Environments) research group. She spent ten years in industrial R&D positions, specializing in knowledge-based systems, prior to returning to MIT in 1995. Her research interests include educational technology, ubiquitous computing, knowledge-based systems, human-computer interaction, and computer-aided design. She received her SM and PhD degrees in computer science from MIT.

Chandra Krintz
Chandra Krintz is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). She joined the UCSB faculty in 2001 after receiving her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). She also received her MS degree in Computer Science from UCSD. Chandra’s research interests include adaptive compiler and runtime techniques that improve program performance in mobile, resource-constrained environments as well as high-end systems. In particular, she focuses on program optimization and specializations that exploit the time-varying behavior in underlying resource performance and program execution.

David Ladd
David Ladd has worked at Microsoft for 13 years in a variety of technical and management roles. He has been in his current role focusing on the expansion of security research and education since 1997. David is the cofounder of the Trustworthy Computing Academic Advisory Board, a group created to expand the interactions between Microsoft and the academic security research community. He serves on a number of external advisory boards and committees, is an associate editor of IEEE Security and Privacy magazine, and is a member of ACM, IEEE, and USENIX. He earned his BS and MBA at Oregon State University.

Jim Larus
I am a senior researcher at Microsoft Research, where I started the Software Productivity Tools (SPT) research group. This group is now part of the Software Improvement Group (SWIG), along with the Testing, Verification, and Measurement (TVM) and HIP groups. I spend much of my time on the Singularity project, a new research project focused on the construction of reliable systems through innovation in the areas of systems, languages, and tools.

My research has applied programming language and compiler technology to a wide range of problems, most notably efficient program measurement and fine-grain distributed shared memory. I’m now working on applying this approach and technologies to improve software development. My goal is to develop and demonstrate new tools for program design, coding, debugging, and test that fundamentally improve software development.

/~larus/

John Lefor
John Lefor is currently a Program Manager in Microsoft Research defining and expanding the Phoenix Academic Program. His interest in compilers started when he was an undergraduate, many years ago, at the University of Rochester and he never quite grew out of appreciating the issues of codegen and performance. John came to Microsoft in 1990 and worked on various projects including OLE and Window 95, as well as internal Microsoft tools used for performance measurement and optimization. His most recent work on the Phoenix framework is aimed at making Phoenix an excellent tool for research and instruction.

Ken Leppert Jr.
Ken is an attorney in Microsoft’s Legal and Corporate Affairs Department. He provides legal support for Microsoft Research, including the External Research and Programs group and Craig Mundie’s Advanced Strategies and Policy organization.

Daniel T. Ling
As corporate vice president, Daniel T. Ling oversees the Redmond laboratory of Microsoft Research. Microsoft Research is dedicated to a broad program of basic and applied research in computer science and related areas. The laboratory’s mission is to advance the state of the art, develop new technologies which benefit Microsoft customers, and engage with the worldwide research community.

Ling served as director of the Redmond laboratory from 1995 until his promotion to vice president in April 2000. During that time, the Redmond laboratory grew over threefold to include research in new areas such as networking, data mining, computer-mediated collaboration, streaming media, devices and new development tools.

Ling joined Microsoft Research in March 1992 as a senior researcher in the area of user interfaces and computer graphics. He was one of the founders of the laboratory.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/ling/default.mspx

Steven Lipner
Steven B. Lipner is Director of Security Engineering Strategy at Microsoft. He is responsible for the development of programs to provide improved product security to Microsoft customers, and for the Security Development Lifecycle team that focuses on improving Microsoft’s security development processes. Mr. Lipner has over thirty years’ experience as a researcher, development manager, and general manager in IT security. He holds S.B. and S.M. degrees from M.I.T. and attended the Harvard Business School’s Program for Management Development.

Hod Lipson
Hod Lipson is an Assistant Professor at Cornell University’s School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering since 2001. He is also on the faculty of Computing & Information Science and a member of the graduate fields of Computer Science and Computational Biology at Cornell. Prior to this appointment, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Brandeis University’s Computer Science Department and a Lecturer at MIT’s Mechanical Engineering Department. He received his PhD in 1998 from the Technion—Israel Institute of Technology. Lipson’s research interests are in the area of biologically-inspired Artificial Intelligence for design automation and robotics. Before joining academia, he spent several years as a research engineer in the mechanical, electronic, and software industries. For more about his many interests and explorations, see http://www.mae.cornell.edu/Lipson/.

Phillip D. Long
Phillip Long is the Director of Learning Outreach for MIT iCampus and Senior Strategist for the Academic Computing Enterprise at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He leads the MIT iCampus dissemination effort freely sharing MIT developed educational technology tools to support active learning and scalable Web services for undergraduate instruction. He also provides direction in applying MIT Information Services and Technology resources to support the integration of technology into the MIT curriculum. Dr. Long’s professional activities are numerous, including: Syllabus Conference board; past chair, Advisory Committee on Teaching and Learning of the NLII, Seminars in Academic Computing Program Committee Chair for 2006, MIT DSpace Policy Committee, chair, NMC Project Horizon 2005 technology advisory task force, Steven’s Institute of Technology WebCampus board, US Army Distance Learning Subcommittee, and many others. Dr. Long is also a Senior Associate with the TLT Group. He has published regularly, including contributed a chapter on Standards?: What and Why? with Frank Tansey in Course Management Systems for Learning: Beyond Accidental Pedagogy, McGee, Carmean & Jafari (eds), Idea Publishing Group, 2005, and The Future of the Classroom, with Steve Ehrmann, Educause Review (in press).

Dr. Long enjoys running, birding and maintains his fragile state of mental through an avid dedication to sailing.

Bruno Melo
Before choosing industrial design, I spent a semester studying Medicine at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. That was when I decided I wasn’t born to be a doctor and wanted to explore my creativity and create products, so I moved to ESDI/UERJ where I’m studying at the fourth year. I have worked for a year and a half at a jewelry design company specialized in gemstones, designing their collections. I have been focusing my studies on what jewelry really is, its meaning to today’s society and the use of new materials by the industry. I’m very interested in marketing strategies combined with product design, having taken some courses in this area.

Chris Moffatt
Chris Moffatt is a Lead Program Manager in the University Relations Group in Microsoft Research. He leads a team that is engaged in building research platforms and partnering with universities to facilitate the research and development of innovative ideas and concepts in the field of learning sciences and technology. The current focus of the team’s work is the Learning Experience Project, where they are developing ConferenceXP, a research platform for investigating how to transform traditional and distance classrooms using emerging and enabling technologies, such as Tablet PCs, broadband networks, wireless infrastructures, and Microsoft .NET technologies. Chris has worked at Microsoft since 1990. Prior to joining Microsoft Research, he worked as a program manager in the SQL Server and Microsoft Learning Technologies product groups, as well as a period of time with Microsoft Consulting in South Africa.

Craig Mundie
Craig Mundie is the Chief Technical Officer of Advanced Strategies and Policy at Microsoft, reporting to Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates. Mr. Mundie works on developing a comprehensive set of technical, business, and policy strategies for Microsoft, including internet-scale platform architectures, critical infrastructure protection, technology regulation, and developing local software economies. Previously at Microsoft he led the Consumer Platforms Division, initiated digital TV efforts including acquiring and managing the WebTV Networks subsidiary. Prior to joining Microsoft in 1992 he co-founded and was CEO of Alliant Computer Systems Corporation.

In August 2000, President Clinton named Mr. Mundie to the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, which advises White House staff on issues affecting the security of the nation’s telecommunications infrastructure. Since February 2002, Mr. Mundie has served on the Council on Foreign Relations. In April 2002, Mr. Mundie joined the Task Force on National Security in the Information Age. Mr. Mundie is a trustee of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and is on the advisory board of the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech).

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/craig/default.mspx

Brad A. Myers
Brad A. Myers is a Professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, where he is the principal investigator for various research projects including: the Pebbles Hand-Held Computer Project, Natural Programming, User Interface Software, and Demonstrational Interfaces. He is the author or editor of over 275 publications, including the books “Creating User Interfaces by Demonstration” and “Languages for Developing User Interfaces,” and he is on the editorial board of five journals. He has been a consultant on user interface design and implementation to over 50 companies, and regularly teaches courses on user interface design and software. In 2004, he was elected to the CHI Academy, an honor bestowed on the principal leaders of the field, whose efforts have shaped the discipline and led the research in human-computer interaction. Myers received a PhD in computer science at the University of Toronto where he developed the Peridot UIMS. He received the MS and BSc degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology during which time he was a research intern at Xerox PARC. From 1980 until 1983, he worked at PERQ Systems Corporation. His research interests include user interface development systems, user interfaces, hand-held computers, programming by example, programming languages for kids, visual programming, interaction techniques, window management, and programming environments. He belongs to SIGCHI, ACM, Senior Member of IEEE, IEEE Computer Society, and Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam

Todd Needham
Todd manages the University Relations team of Technology Evangelists. His group is responsible for working with researchers and faculty interested in applying Microsoft products and technologies in their investigations. He also manages academic source code licenses, Microsoft Research’s annual Request for Proposal (RFP) process, and external research funding.

John Nordlinger
John Nordlinger is a Manager in the External Research and Programs group in Microsoft Research. Before joining Microsoft, John was a Technical Director at Oracle, where the worked on 64-bit Oracle and launched the Oracle 64-bit VLM database on Digital’s Alpha using SAS Insight on the front end. John was then asked to do a similar event with Microsoft SQL Server with the 64-bit SQL Server database, a special supporting version of Window XP and with SAS Insight again on the front end. Responsible for Microsoft’s Scalability Day, John, working with Microsoft Research’s wizard Jim Gray, launched TerraServer, a billion-byte SQL Server database and map of the US and other regions, and hosted six of the largest demos in Microsoft. TerraServer remains a very popular Web resource. John then left Microsoft, went mountain climbing and toured Asia (India and Thailand), eventually returning to Microsoft two and a half years later to work in Microsoft Research.

Initially John was asked to manage the universities in the Northeast and manage the Indian schools (IITs) where he was under the stewardship of Anandan, now director of the Microsoft Research Lab in India. John then changed focus from geographic regions to solving the problem of declining computer science (CS) enrollment, especially in the US, and has been charged with reinvigorating CS curriculum with CS computer gaming technologies and concepts, as well as with robots.

Miguel Nussbaum
Electrical Engineer, Universidad Católica de Chile, 1980, Master of Science in Information and Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA 1984, Doktor der Technischen Wissenschaften, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH), Zürthe School of Engineering of the Catholic University of Chile. His main research is the use of wirelessly interconnected Pocket PCs for collaborative work in the classroom.

Paul Oka
As a research program manager, Mr. Oka is responsible for coordinating a $25 million research alliance between Microsoft Research and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mr. Oka is a member of Microsoft Research learning science and technology group but he is located on the MIT campus in Cambridge, MA where he supports several iCampus projects as a technical advisor and coordinates technology transfer of iCampus technologies into other universities, Microsoft Research teams, and advises on advancing next generation technologies for lifelong education.

Mr. Oka joined Microsoft in 1993 where he spent seven years working with fortune 100 companies in the New England area building distributed systems on Microsoft technologies. Prior to joining the Learning Science and Technology group, Mr. Oka was the Director of the Microsoft Technology Center in Waltham, MA, where he lead a team of architects to provide everything an enterprise customer needs to envision, plan, and architect a complete customized solution using Microsoft .NET-connected technologies.

Before joining Microsoft, Mr. Oka worked for Honeywell Bull Information Systems CASE tools department where he develop API’s to access local OLTP systems from both UNIX and Windows systems. Mr. Oka attended University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer systems engineering.

Krister Olsson
Krister Olsson is an artist and programmer currently exploring the creation of non-traditional display systems as a means for stimulating dialogue about larger social and political issues. Krister also produces screen-based work exploring issues of community and identity through the subversion of social networks and creation of new creative tools.

A co-founder and principal of San Francisco design firm Tree-Axis, Krister has been recognized for his work by the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs, and has shown work in Japan, Hong Kong, Brazil, as well as the US.

Krister has taught courses in interaction design at California College of the Arts and San Francisco Art Institute. He is a former columnist for both IdN and Shift magazines. Krister was born in Singapore and grew up in Tokyo and Beijing. He received his BA in Computer Science from Swarthmore College and is currently pursuing an MFA in Media Art at UCLA.

Jon Pincus
Jon Pincus works at Microsoft Research on software reliability tools and technologies, concentrating on static analysis. As founder and CTO of Intrinsa Corporation, he was one of the original developers of PREfix, and continues to be involved in its development and deployment inside Microsoft. Before that, he worked on CAD and Document Management systems and collected the usual degrees from the usual institutions.

Letícia Pires
I’ve moved to Rio de Janeiro when I started studying design at ESDI/UERJ. I’m in the fourth year and I’m interested in communication, interaction design and the editorial area. I like cinema, art and Brazilian craftsmanship. I have worked in an office that makes educational material and also at ESDI’s library. Living alone in a big and cosmopolitan city is a new and good experience for me. I’m interested in traveling, to get to know new places, different people and cultures. For me the best aspect of design is the investigation, the research, being close to people’s life. The great challenge is to communicate with passion, emotion and responsibility.

Jay Pittman
Jay Pittman has spent the past eight years working on cursive handwriting recognition for the Tablet PC. Prior to joining Microsoft, he spent nine nears at MCC in Austin, Texas, working on a variety of recognition and human-computer-interface research topics, with more than half of that time spent in handwriting recognition. In the early 1990s, Jay spent two years at the National University of Singapore working on recognizing cursive Chinese script. He also spent two years at the Oregon Graduate Institute working on the integration of handwriting recognition with speech recognition, natural language processing, and 3D graphics, in a military training application. Jay’s current research focuses on reducing the cost of expanding recognition to new languages.

Shaz Qadeer
I am a member of the Software Productivity Tools group at Microsoft Research. Currently, my research interests are formal design and analysis of software, hardware, and protocols, as well as analysis techniques: model checking, automated theorem proving, type systems, run-time verification.

/~qadeer

Greg Quinn
Greg is currently a Principle Investigator and a development architect in the Science Research and Development group of the San Diego Supercomputer Center, La Jolla, California. Greg received his Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry and Physiology from Leeds University, UK, in 1988 and his Ph.D. in molecular biology and computational data analysis from Southampton University, UK, in 1992. His developer background includes programming on Windows, UNIX, Macintosh and Linux platforms. Most recently he has been working on data visualization on mobile devices, and is interested in improving the interactive capabilities of mobile devices with speech recognition.

Richard F. Rashid
Currently charged with oversight of Microsoft Research’s worldwide operations, Richard (“Rick”) F. Rashid previously served as the director of Microsoft Research, focusing on operating systems, networking, and multiprocessors. In that role he was responsible for managing work on key technologies leading to the development of Microsoft Corp.’s interactive TV system and authored a number of patents in areas such as data compression, networking, and operating systems. In addition to running Microsoft Research, Rashid also was instrumental in creating the team that eventually became Microsoft’s Digital Media Division and directing Microsoft’s first e-commerce group. Rashid was promoted to vice president of Microsoft Research in 1994, and then to senior vice president in 2000.

Before joining Microsoft in September 1991, Rashid was professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). After becoming a CMU faculty member in September 1979, he directed the design and implementation of several influential network operating systems and published dozens of papers about computer vision, operating systems, programming languages for distributed processing, network protocols, and communications security. During his tenure at CMU, Rashid developed the Mach multiprocessor operating system, which has been influential in the design of many modern operating systems and remains at the core of a number of commercial systems.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/rick/default.mspx

John Richardson
I am a Development Lead in the Windows Core Operating System Division (COSD), specifically the Networking and Devices Technology Group. Currently I am leading the development of a new kernel mode device driver model for Windows drivers. I have been at Microsoft for three years, but have spent 22 years in the industry working on multi-processor operating systems, starting with UNIX, and then Windows in the last 12 years. At my previous companies, I have delivered the base code for Windows Terminal Server, a multi-processor UNIX implementation, and a MACH 3.0 Unix SVR4 server.

Daniel Robbins
Daniel C. Robbins is a User Interface Designer working at Microsoft Research. His projects include interaction techniques for information visualization and search on everything from Smartphones to wall-sized displays. Dan’s degree is in fine art. In his free time Dan enjoys hiking, making sculpture from aerospace castoffs, and planning for his first child. Prior to working at Microsoft, Dan helped pioneer the 3D UI work from the Brown University Computer Graphics Group.

/~dcr/

Vladimir O. Safonov
Vladimir O. Safonov received his master degree with excellence at St. Petersburg University in 1977, candidate of sciences degree in 1982, doctor of sciences degree in 1991, and professor degree in 1994. With St. Petersburg University for 28 years. Areas of expertise: Microsoft .NET, aspect-oriented programming, programming languages and compilers, Java technology, knowledge management. Published 70 papers, including five books and three U.S. software patents. Twenty-eight years experience in teaching computer science and R&D software projects, including 12 years experience in international projects. Received three Microsoft Research grant awards in 2002 and two in 2004.

http://user.rol.ru/~vsafonov

John SanGiovanni
With a background ranging from mobile computing to digital culture, John SanGiovanni is known for his unique perspective on emerging technologies. In his current role as Technical Evangelist for Microsoft Research, John manages Microsoft’s academic research funding into mobile computing and wireless technologies. Prior this role, John has had several technology learning-related roles with PPI/Knowledge Universe, and worked in entertainment at the Walt Disney Company. John’s current research focus is in interaction techniques and hardware interface technologies for next-generation mobile devices. In this area, SanGiovanni has several patents for alternative text input systems (non-handwriting, non-speech, non-typing). In recent years, John has spent his time exploring the ways in which mobile devices and wireless technologies will transform communication, learning, and entertainment.

Greg Schechter
Greg Schechter is an architect on the “Avalon” team in the Windows Client Platform Division at Microsoft, focusing primarily on programming model and the engine behind the multimedia, graphics, and imaging portion of Avalon. Greg is also leading the development effort for the new Desktop Window Manager in Longhorn, and he plays a key role in its architecture.

Prior to Avalon, Greg was the development manager for the Windows Forms team in the .NET Framework and the lead on the Mobile Internet Toolkit, a system for adaptive server-side generation of ASP.NET content targeting a variety of types of mobile devices. Upon joining Microsoft in 1994 until 1998, he was the development lead and primary technical driver behind DirectAnimation, an API set for integrated media and animation that shipped with Internet Explorer 4, Windows 2000, and beyond.

Greg was at Sun Microsystems from 1988 to 1994, working on a variety of 2D and 3D graphics packages and on advanced integrated media API and system development. Greg received an MS in Computer Science from Stanford University and a BS in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan.

When on furlough (a small joke, really), Greg gets to hang out with his wife and three kids.

Wolfram Schulte
I’m a researcher at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington, USA. I started here in 1999. Before joining Microsoft Research, I worked at the University of Ulm (1993-1999), at the Technical University Berlin (1997-1992), and for a major German software company (1992-1993). Since 2003, I’ve been managing the Foundations of Software Engineering (FSE) group in Redmond. We focus on advanced technologies for software modeling and verification that include Contracts for C# (the Spec# project), and advanced test-generation and verification tools (the SpecExplorer project and the MUTT project). Earlier I researched data access integration (The Cω project), and I worked with Abstract State Machines.

/users/schulte/

Satnam Singh
Satnam Singh is an architect at Microsoft investigating design and verification techniques for parallel hardware systems and concurrent programs. His current interests include the formal analysis of message passing programs and programming methodology for multi-core systems. Satnam Singh obtained his BSc and PhD in computing science in the area of hardware design with functional programming from the University of Glasgow where he continued to be a professor in Electrical Engineering and then Computing Science from 1991 to 1998. In 1998 he joined Xilinx’s research laboratory in San Jose, California where he developed alternative techniques for specifying and formally verifying data-parallel hardware systems including the Lava system (http://www.raintown.org/lava). In 2004 he joined a Microsoft incubation team working on parallel and distributed systems.

Peter-Pike Sloan
I went to school at the University of Utah and later worked in the SCI Group. I’ve also worked at Evans and Sutherland and at PTC on a cool 3D Painting Program.

/~ppsloan/

Gino Sorcinelli
Gino Sorcinelli joined the Isenberg School of Management (Isenberg School), University of Massachusetts Amherst for Fall semester 1994 as a member of the Accounting and Information Systems Department, and the Director of Computer Resources. Since assuming this position, he has been responsible for teaching courses about business information systems as well as managing the computer and network resources within the Isenberg School. Prior to his arrival at the Isenberg School, Gino spent six years in the private sector working for a large multi-line insurance company. In that position, he led a team of Human Resource professionals during a period of time when the company initiated an enterprise-wide reengineering effort, reduced employee FTE by 25%, and merged with another financial services company. Before working in the insurance industry, Professor Sorcinelli held a tenured faculty post in the Division of Labor Studies, Indiana University for 13 years. During this period, he helped to create the first microcomputer-training lab for union officials in the United States. He also developed many different computer-based instructional programs.

Revi Sterling
Revi Sterling is a manager in the External Relations team in Microsoft Research. In addition to facilitating Trustworthy Computing collaborations between universities and Microsoft, she manages Microsoft’s gender equity initiatives in higher education. She works with several key partners like CRA-W, ACM-W, the National Center for Women and IT, and the Anita Borg Institute to design and support programs to attract and retain women in computing based majors.

Stewart Tansley
Stewart is responsible for Embedded Systems as part of the University Relations team in Redmond. Before this, he worked on Microsoft’s production IPv6 software as part of the Windows Networking team. Prior to joining Microsoft in 2001, Stewart spent 13 years in the telecommunications industry in various technical and management positions in network software research and development, focusing on technology transfer. Stewart has a PhD in Artificial Intelligence applied to Engineering from the University of Technology, Loughborough, UK. He has published a variety of papers in artificial intelligence and network management, several patents, and co-authored a book on software engineering for artificial intelligence applications.

/~stansley

Bruno Temer
I have been studying in two different universities, one of them is ESDI/UERJ, where I have being focusing on product design, and more specifically sustainable products and materials—we’ve been working at ESDI/UERJ on a new kind of plywood, made out of discarded palm tree trunks, that has received an iF award in the category of new materials from the Industrie Forum Hannover, of Germany. The other university I study at is the Catholic University of Rio, where I’m in the sixth period of the engineering course, specializing in environmental damages and their causes. The Microsoft Design Expo 2005 was a challenge: it was an opportunity to develop a technological product and to exercise my creativity in a different area, working with different and interesting people—for me it has been very rewarding.

Joe Tront
Joe Tront is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech. He has been working on using technology to improve engineering education since 1984. Besides his work on tablet PCs, he has developed several online multimedia presentations and is the editor of the engineering collections in the digital libraries NEEDS and MERLOT.

Helen Wang
Helen J. Wang is a researcher in the Systems and Networking research group at Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA. Her research interests are in system/network security, networking, protocol architectures, mobile/wireless computing, and wide-area large scale distributed system design. She received her Ph.D. degree from the Computer Science department of U. C. Berkeley in December, 2001. Her Ph.D. thesis was on “Scalable, robust wide-area control architecture for integrated communications.” Helen obtained her Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from U. T. Austin, and Master of Science in Computer Science from U. C. Berkeley.

/~helenw/

Jian Wang
Jian Wang is the senior researcher and research manager of multi-modal user interface group at Microsoft Research Asia. The current major research projects the group has been working on include digital ink and recognition for Tablet PC, digital pen and paper, and aggregated personal computing. Before joining Microsoft in 1999, He held a position of professor at Zhejiang University. Jian’s research interests have been in the areas of digital ink and pen computing, ubiquitous computing and multi-modal user interface.

Wei Wang
Wei Wang is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and the Carolina Center for Genomic Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received a MS degree from the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1995 and a PhD degree in Computer Science from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1999. Before joining UNC-Chapel Hill, she was with the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center between 1999 and 2002. Dr . Wang received the IBM Invention Achievement Awards in 2000 and 2001. She received a UNC Junior Faculty Development Award in 2003 and an NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award in 2005. She is a recipient of the Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellowship Award in 2005. Dr. Wang is an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering and an editorial board member of the Journal of Data Management. She serves on the program committees of prestigious international conferences such as ACM SIGMOD, ACM SIGKDD, VLDB, ICDE, ACM CIKM, IEEE ICDM, and SSDBM. Dr. Wang’s research interests include data mining, bioinformatics, and databases. She leads the Data Mining Lab at UNC.

Laurie Williams
Dr. Laurie Williams is an Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University where she leads the Software Engineering Realsearch group. She received her undergraduate degree in Industrial Engineering from Lehigh University. She also received an MBA from Duke University and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Utah. Prior to returning to academia to obtain her PhD, she worked for IBM for nine years. Dr. Williams research interests include agile software development, testing, reliability, security, and software process.

Dr. Andy Wilson
Andy Wilson is currently a member of the Adaptive Systems and Interaction group at Microsoft Research, where he dreams of a day when commodity user interfaces work half as well as they do in the movies. He received his PhD from the MIT Media Lab in 2000 and his BA in computer science with a minor in cognitive psychology at Cornell in 1993. His interests lie in novel interfaces based on sensing techniques such as computer vision, wireless inertial sensing, gesture recognition, and probabilistic reasoning.

Wm. A. Wulf
Wm. A. Wulf is president of the National Academy of Engineering and vice chair of the National Research Council, the principal operating arm of the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering. He is on leave from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, where he is a University Professor and AT&T Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Among his activities at the university are a complete revision of the undergraduate computer science curriculum, research on computer architecture and computer security, and an effort to assist humanities scholars exploit information technology. Wulf has had a distinguished professional career that includes serving as assistant director of the National Science Foundation; chair and chief executive officer of Tartan Laboratories Inc., Pittsburgh; and professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. He is the author of more than 100 papers and technical reports, has written three books, and holds two U.S. patents.

http://www.nae.edu/NAE/naehome.nsf/weblinks/MKEZ-534S69?OpenDocument

Dr. Joshua M Yelon
Joshua Yelon is currently a developer for the 3D engine Panda3D, which is unusual in that its design emphasis is its short learning curve and rapid development. This makes Panda3D ideal for use in educational settings and other situations where time is short. Dr. Yelon is also one of the co-founders of eGenesis, the independent game studio that developed the persistent online world “A Tale in the Desert.” This game defied genre conventions by omitting combat and instead focusing on economics and strategic interpersonal interaction. Dr. Yelon received his Ph.D. in parallel computing from the University of Illinois.

Qi Zhang
Qi Zhang has spent the past three years working on East Asian handwriting recognition for the Tablet PC. Qi received his M.S. degree in Computer Science from Washington University in 2002 and his Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from Washington University in 2001. Qi’s current research focuses on personalizing recognition, improving cursive recognition, and enhancing input throughput for East Asian recognizers.