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 was the architect of the group until 2005. He is currently the Research Development Manager in Live Labs. He has 12 patents awarded and has several publications in the neural networks and machine learning fields.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas
Blaise Aguera y Arcas has a broad background in computer science and applied math, and he has been writing software for more than 20 years, with special emphasis on scientific computing, data analysis, machine learning, and graphics. He graduated from Princeton University with a BA in Physics in 1998, and he attended the PhD program there in Applied Math. His advisor, Ingrid Daubechies, known as one of the inventors of wavelets, periodically asks when he plans to hand in the thesis.

His experience includes independent research, consulting, and freelance software design in a variety of areas, including computational neuroscience, computational drug design, data compression, and others. During 1996–97, he was Senior Software Engineer at Real-Time Geometry, which was purchased by MetaTools (later Viewpoint.com). While at RTG and MetaTools, he authored patents on multiresolution 3D visualization and techniques for video compression and internet transmission using Trixels (TM), as well as playing a leading role in developing streaming and multiresolution 2D and 3D technologies and contributing to the hardware and software design of a 3D laser scanner. In 2001, he received worldwide press coverage for his discovery, using computational methods, of the printing technology used by Johann Gutenberg, considered the inventor of printing from movable type in the West. This technology differs markedly from later printing technologies, suggesting a reassessment of Gutenberg’s traditional historical role. Blaise’s work on early printing was the subject of a BBC Open University documentary entitled, “What Did Gutenberg Invent?” and a monograph on this research is (eventually) forthcoming. He has published essays and research papers in theoretical biology, neuroscience, and history in The EMBO Journal, Neural Computation and Nature.

In 2004, Blaise founded a software company originally named (rather opaquely) Sand Codex LLC, later Seadragon, Inc., to develop ideas in scalable architectures and user interfaces for interacting with large volumes of visual information, potentially over a narrow-bandwidth connection. He raised two rounds of funding, first from angel investors, then from a Seattle-area VC, hired the initial engineering and management team, and was the principal author of the company’s IP portfolio. Microsoft bought Seadragon at the beginning of 2006, in an acquisition driven by Technical Fellow and Live Labs founder Gary Flake.

Alfred V. Aho
Alfred V. Aho is Lawrence Gussman Professor of Computer Science and Vice Chair for Undergraduate Education in the Computer Science Department at Columbia University. Al has won the IEEE John von Neumann Medal and is a Member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He chairs the advisory committee for the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate of the National Science Foundation. He is also the “A” in AWK.

Jim Allchin
As co-president of Microsoft’s Platforms & Services Division, James (Jim) Allchin shares overall responsibility with Kevin Johnson for the division of the company that includes the Windows and Windows Live Group, Windows Live Platform Group, Online Business Group, Market Expansion Group, Core Operating System Division, Windows Client Marketing Group, Developer and Platform Evangelism Group, and the Server and Tools Business Group. Allchin has announced his plans to retire from Microsoft following the commercial availability of Windows Vista™, the next-generation Microsoft Windows operating system.

Previously, as group vice president of the Platforms Group, Allchin had overall responsibility for the product delivery, engineering and technical architecture for the Microsoft Windows operating system, Microsoft .NET, the Windows Server System and new media technology. He was also responsible for delivering the best developer tools, framework and support to fulfill the promise of .NET. His group’s mission was to build platforms software that consumers and businesses will make an integral part of their day-to-day activities.

Allchin is a member of the Senior Leadership Team, responsible for developing Microsoft’s core direction along with Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates. Allchin joined Microsoft in 1990 with the initial charter of driving the company’s networking product strategy. Since then he has led the development and marketing efforts for a variety of Microsoft’s operating systems and other server systems.

Before joining Microsoft, Allchin helped start Banyan Systems Inc., where he was the principal architect of the VINES distributed network operating system. He spent more than seven years at Banyan, holding numerous executive management positions in development and marketing. Ultimately, he became senior vice president and chief technology officer.

While completing his doctorate in computer science in the early 1980s, Allchin was the principal architect of the Clouds distributed transactional, object-oriented operating system. Before that, he helped develop the DX series of operating systems for Texas Instruments Inc. Allchin has attended the University of Florida, Stanford University and the Georgia Institute of Technology.

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

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.

Marcelo Arenas
Marcelo Arenas received B.Sc. degrees in Mathematics (1997) and Computer Engineering (1998) and a M.Sc. degree in Computer Science (1998) from the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, and a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science (2005) from the University of Toronto, Canada. In 2005, he joined the Computer Science Department at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile as an Assistant Professor. His research interests are in different aspects of database theory, such as expressive power of query languages, database semantics, integrity constraints, inconsistency handling, database design, XML databases, and data exchange. Marcelo has received an IBM Ph.D. Fellowship (2004), two best paper awards (PODS 2003 in San Diego, California, and PODS 2005 in Baltimore, Maryland) and an Honorable Mention Award from the ACM Special Interest Group on Management of Data (SIGMOD) for his Ph.D dissertation, “Design Principles for XML Data.”

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.

Victor Bahl
Victor Bahl is a Principal Researcher and Manager of the Networking Research Group. His research interests span a variety of problems in computer networking, including self-managing networks, low-power RF communications, ubiquitous wireless Internet access and services, location determination techniques and services, multi-hop wireless mesh networks, and real-time audio-visual wireless communications.

Guy Barker
Guy Barker is a Technical Development Lead in the Microsoft Laptop PC Group, having previously worked in the Tablet PC Group. Guy’s interest is in promoting awareness of today’s mobile PC platforms as practical tools in the field of accessibility and in identifying how more people can benefit from these technologies in the future. His related site, http://herbi.org/, invites suggestions and feedback on this topic.

Bryan Barnett
Bryan Barnett is Lead Program Manager with the External Research & Programs group at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington, where his current responsibilities include negotiation of sponsored research and intellectual property agreements with universities. Before joining Microsoft, Barnett was founder and Vice-President of ApexLearning, which he originated as an incubation project while working as investment analyst and project manager at the venture capital firm Vulcan Northwest. In previous careers, Barnett was a university teacher and an attorney with the Colorado General Assembly. He holds a Ph.D. from Rutgers University and a J.D. from the University of Colorado.

Regina Barzilay
Regina Barzilay, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is up to the challenge. Barzilay is focusing her research on computational modeling of linguistic phenomena. She is exploring the ability of a computer to summarize information found in multiple documents that contain related information, such as news articles covering the same event. This will aid readers in finding meaning from the ever increasing body of information available today.

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, as well as an Affiliate Assistant Professor in Computer Science at the University of Washington. 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. While at Fraunhofer-IPSI and during his stay as a guest researcher at the GroupLens project at the University on Minnesota, Baudisch worked on user interfaces for information filtering systems. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany.

Genevieve Bell
Genevieve Bell is the Director of User Experience in Intel’s Digital Home Group. Her team is focused on gaining a better understanding of daily life in homes all over the world, and using that knowledge to influence platform directions, product offerings, investment decisions and strategic planning. Prior to joining the Digital Home Group, Bell spent seven years as a contributing member of Peoples and Practices Research where she conducted ethnographic research in a variety of American consumer spaces and households and in the domestic spaces of five strategically situated European countries for several Intel product groups, as well as a study of the emerging middle classes in China and India. She is particularly interested in issues of cultural difference as they are expressed around technology adoption and use; is widely published on this topic and holds one patent in the US, and one pending in Japan stemming from this work.

Bell recently completed a three year research project focused on gaining a better understanding of the ways in which cultural practices in urban Asia are shaping people’s relationships to new information and communication technologies, conducting ethnographic fieldwork in seven Asian countries, encompassing 100 households in 17 different cities. Insights gained from this project resulted in the creation of technology offerings specifically tailored to China and India — a first for Intel, and have helped to bring the notion of ‘culture’ as a technology determinant into Intel’s mainstream thinking. She was the recipient of an individual Intel Achievement Award in 2005 for this work.

Prior to joining Intel in 1998, Bell taught anthropology and Native American Studies at Stanford University. Bell received her BA/MA in anthropology from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania in 1991. She earned a PhD in cultural anthropology from Stanford University in 1998. She is working on a book for MIT Press based on her fieldwork in Asia.

Tanya Berger-Wolf
Dr. Tanya Y. Berger-Wolf is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois. Her work is in application of discrete modeling and analysis techniques to various areas of computational biology. Specifically, her research is in computational population biology, from genetics to social interactions in both human and animal populations.

Otto Berkes
I was born in Hungary in 1963 and raised and educated in the United States. I graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont with a Bachelor’s degree in physics in 1985, and received a Master’s degree in computer science and electrical engineering from the University of Vermont in 1989. I worked at Autodesk developing the rendering engine for AutoCad 11. I joined Microsoft in 1993, and wrote the first software-accelerated OpenGL pipeline to enable real-time rendering. Having led the OpenGL development team through two Windows releases, I was later responsible for DirectX graphics from DirectX 5 through DirectX 8. I led the initial prototyping and development effort for a game console which became Xbox, and helped shape the Xbox technical and market strategy. I was co-creator of the incubation project that led to the formation of Media Center. I am the architect of Microsoft’s ultra-mobile PC efforts, the creator of the “Origami” project, and general manager for UMPC. I live in the city of Seattle, Washington with my wife and three boys. When I’m not at work, I’m usually riding my horse, training for my hobby competing as a show-jumper.

Phil Bourne, PhD
Philip E. Bourne is a Professor in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of California San Diego and also Co-Director of the Protein Data Bank and an Adjunct Professor at the Burnham Institute and the Keck Graduate Institute. He is the Founding Editor-in-Chief of the open access journal PLoS Computational Biology, he is on the Advisory Board of Biopolymers and on the Editorial Boards of Proteins: Structure Function and Bioinformatics, Biosilico, and IEEE Trends in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics. He is also a long standing member of the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health panels responsible for reviewing proposals relating to biological infrastructure and bioinformatics.

Patrick Bristow
Patrick Bristow has been a part of the ConferenceXP team since 2004. His area of focus is in-classroom educational technology, which he has been researching for five years. Prior to joining Microsoft Research, he was a co-founder of the e-Fuzion project at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

A.J. Brush
A.J. Brush is a researcher in the Communities Technologies group. Her main research interest is human-computer interaction with a focus on computer supported cooperative work. She focuses on how technology can help people and groups with everyday problems, such as too much e-mail or family scheduling. She received her Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Washington in September 2002.

Michael Buckley
Michael Buckley is a member of the graduate faculty at the University of Buffalo, partner in a software development firm specializing in adaptive communications, and father to a handicapped daughter who uses a Tablet PC as her portal to the world.

Bill Buxton
Bill Buxton is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research. Prior to joining Microsoft he was Principal of the Toronto-based design and consulting firm, Buxton Design. Bill is one of the pioneers in computer music, and has played an important role in the development of computer-based tools for music, film, industrial design, graphics, and animation. As a researcher, he has had a long history with Xerox’ Palo Alto Research Center and the University of Toronto, where he is still an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science. He has also been a lecturer in the Department of Industrial Design at the Ontario College of Art and Design.

From 1994 until December 2002, he was Chief Scientist of Alias|Wavefront, and from 1995, its parent company SGI Inc. In 2001, the Hollywood Reporter named him one of the 10 most influential innovators in Hollywood. In 2002 Time Magazine named him one of the top five designers in Canada, and he was elected to the ACM’s CHI Academy.

More information on Buxton and his work can be found at www.billbuxton.com.

Max Chickering
Max Chickering is a Mad Scientist working in Microsoft Live Labs. Max recently defected from Microsoft Research, where he spent 10 years in the Machine Learning and Applied Statistics group. He is interested in practical applications of machine learning algorithms. Max received his PhD in computer science from the University of California at Los Angeles, and he received his Bachelors in computer science from the University of California at Berkeley.

http://research.microsoft.com/~dmax

Ken Church
Ken Church received his BS, Masters, and PhD from MIT in computer science in 1978, 1980, and 1983. He joined AT&T Bell Labs in 1983 and moved to Microsoft in 2003. He has worked in many areas of computational linguistics, including speech, language modeling, data mining, and search. Honors: AT&T Fellow.

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.

Michael F. Cohen
Michael F. Cohen, Principal Researcher, joined Microsoft Research in 1994 from Princeton University where he served on the faculty of Computer Science. Michael received The 1998 SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award for his contributions to the Radiosity method for image synthesis. Dr. Cohen also served as paper’s chair for SIGGRAPH ’98.

Michael received his Ph.D. in 1992 from the University of Utah. He also holds undergraduate degrees in Art and Civil Engineering from Beloit College and Rutgers University respectively, and an M.S. in Computer Graphics from Cornell. Dr. Cohen also served on the Architecture faculty at Cornell University and was an adjunct faculty member at the University of Utah. His work at the University of Utah focused on spacetime control for linked figure animation. He is perhaps better known for his work on the radiosity method for realistic image synthesis as discussed in his recent book “Radiosity and Image Synthesis” (co-authored by John R. Wallace).

At Microsoft, Dr. Cohen has worked on a number of projects ranging from image based rendering, to animation, to camera control, to more artistic non-photorealistic rendering. An early image-based rendering project, dubbed “The Lumigraph” is similar to creating a digital hologram. More recent work has focused on Computational Photography providing new ways to combine multiple images.

Jan Cuny
Jan Cuny is a Professor at the University of Oregon, working mostly in the area of domain-specific support for computational modeling. Since 2004, she has been at the National Science Foundation, heading the CISE Broadening Participation in Computing initiative. Jan was a long time member of the Computing Research Association’s Committee on the Status of Women (CRA-W), serving at various times as a CRA-W co-chair, and the lead on their Academic Career Mentoring, Grad Cohort, and Cohort for Associated Professors projects. Jan has also been on the Advisory Board for Anita Borg Institute for Woman and Technology, the Leadership team of the National Center for Women in Technology, and the Executive Committee of the Coalition to Diversify Computing. She was Program Chair of the 2004 Grace Hopper Conference and she is General Chair of the 2006 conference. She is a member of the ACM Ed Council.

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.

http://research.microsoft.com/users/marycz

Rob DeLine
Rob DeLine heads a group called Human Interactions in Programming (HIP) at Microsoft Research, which uses an HCI approach to study software development as a human activity. With his colleagues, he is currently studying recommender systems for team newcomers, the use of spatial memory to navigate large code bases, and patterns of communication and interruption in co-located development teams. In the past, he has studied program verification and type systems, software architecture (dissertation under Mary Shaw at CMU), and user interface toolkits (MS under Randy Pausch at University of Virginia).

Dr. Brian Donnellan
Dr. Brian Donnellan is a Lecturer in Information Systems in the National University of Ireland, Galway. His research interests lie primarily in the area of knowledge management systems, a broad area that encompasses the use of information systems to support knowledge management, innovation systems, new product development, and technology management. He has spent 20 years working in industry. His most recent position was in Analog Devices B.V. (ADI), the European R&D centre of a U.S. electronics company with headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts.

Stephen Emmott
Stephen is Director of Microsoft’s External Research Office, and architect of the European Science Initiative, Microsoft’s new research programme focused on creating and accelerating fundamental advances in ‘new kinds’ of science and computing. Stephen’s role is vital to extending Microsoft Research Cambridge’s position and function in the European region.

Stephen has a PhD in Computational Neuroscience and has worked in pioneering research fields at the intersection of computing and science for almost two decades. He has held appointments at BT Laboratories, AT&T Bell Laboratories, and at NCR, as founder, chief scientist and managing director of its internationally acclaimed Advanced Research Lab (the Knowledge Lab). He holds several patents in science and technology.

Stephen is visiting professor at University College London, where he is also on the Board of Advisors. He sits on the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Science & Innovation Framework committee, advises the UK Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council, acts as advisor to the Swiss National Science Foundation Programme, and has been an advisor to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the UK Department of Trade & Industry.

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.

Daniel Fay
Daniel Fay is the Director for Technical Computing in North America where he works with scientists to leverage computing technologies to make breakthroughs in scientific and engineering research. Previously, Dan was Manager of the eScience Program in Microsoft Research, supporting academic eScience research projects. Dan was previously the Program Manager for Project 7, a unique project that brought together a variety of academic languages and language researchers to target and give feedback on the Common Language Runtime and its multi language support.

Joseph Fernando
Joseph Fernando is an Architect and Program Manager at Microsoft. Joseph has over 15 years experience in the computer industry in engineering, product development, and architecture. Previously, Joseph has driven initiatives to enhance software architecture, design and development practices at Microsoft. Further he has architected productivity tools, has served as a Development Manager in the Digital Media Division, and has led multiple teams in Visual Studio/Development Division. He has helped ship over 15 products while at Microsoft Corporation. He earned his undergraduate degree from Knox College with a double major in Computer Science (Honors) and Physics; and a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Oakland University. His graduate research was in the area of adaptive controls.

Gary Flake
Gary William Flake, Ph.D., is a technical fellow at Microsoft Corporation, where he is responsible for integration between Microsoft Research and MSN, and for setting the technology vision and future direction of the MSN^® portal, Web search, desktop search, and commercial search efforts.

Before joining Microsoft, Flake founded Yahoo! Research Labs, ran Yahoo!’s corporate R&D activities and companywide innovation effort, and was Overture Research’s chief science officer. Before joining Overture, Flake was a research scientist at NEC Research Institute and the leader of its Web data-mining program. His numerous publications, spanning 15 years, have focused on machine learning, data mining, and self-organization. His other research interests include Web measurement, efficient algorithms, models of adaptation inspired by nature, and time-series forecasting.

He has served on numerous academic conference and workshop organization committees and is a member of the editorial board for the Association for Computing Machinery’s Transactions on Internet Technology. Flake, who earned his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Maryland, also wrote the award-winning book, “The Computational Beauty of Nature,” which is used in college courses worldwide.

Mythreyee Ganapathy
Mythreyee Ganapathy currently manages the external research programs for Microsoft Research in India. Mythreyee considers herself fortunate to have gained a rich experience in the software industry by executing various roles around the globe. Starting out as a software engineer in India, she moved on to being a consultant with PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP in their Systems Integration practice. Since joining Microsoft, Mythreyee has been working deeply with academia as a product manager and program manager. She has a bachelors in computer engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India and a Masters in Computer Information Systems from Bentley College, Waltham, Massachusetts.

David Garza-Salazar
David Garza-Salazar is a full professor and Associate Dean of the Division of Electronics and Information Technologies at Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Monterrey in Mexico. He holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science from Tecnológico de Monterrey and a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Colorado State University. His research interests include parallel computing, distributed systems, operating systems, digital libraries, and mobile computing. Dr. Garza has been principle investigator in different projects sponsored by national and international agencies, such as CONACYT (National Council of Science and Technology in Mexico), CUDI (University Corporation for the Development of Internet), and the European Commission. Dr. Garza-Salazar has been the director of research and graduate programs in Electronics and Information Technologies from 2001-2006. He is a member of IEEE and ACM.

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.

http://research.microsoft.com/~JGemmell/

François Guimbretière
François Guimbretière is an assistant professor at the University of Maryland Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL). His research interests focus on pen computing. In the paper world, he is studying how new technologies can be used to bridge the gap between the digital world and the paper world. In the digital world, he is studying how new design for pen-based computer such as CrossY, a crossing-based drawing application. He is also conducting research on how to help people understand and compare very large trees such as phylogenies.

http://www.cs.umd.edu/~francois

Tom Healy
Thomas E. Healy is lead program manager at External Research & 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.

Aaron Hertzmann
Aaron Hertzmann is assistant professor of computer science at the University of Toronto. Hertzmann is working on building simulated models for computer animation. His work shows that realistic physical models can be created from a small number of physical measurements. These models can predict human motion in a variety of new circumstances, making them invaluable to animators. Similarly, these methods may have impact on biomechanics research, ultimately aiding physicians and physical therapists in their work.

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 http://research.microsoft.com/Users/kenh/Default.htm.

Galen Hunt
Galen C. Hunt is Principal Researcher of the Microsoft Research Operating Systems Group. He joined Microsoft Research since 1997, but spent a 2.5 year sabbatical in the Windows Server Division. Galen wrote the Detours package, the first prototype of Windows Media Player, and contributed code to Linux 0.11. He has shipped bugs in Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Automated Deployment Services. Galen holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Rochester and degree in Physics from the University of Utah.

http://research.microsoft.com/~galenh/

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.

Harold Javid
Harold Javid is program manager at External Research & Programs, Microsoft Research. In this role, he is responsible for the Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellowship program and the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit. Previous to joining Microsoft Research, he enjoyed seven years of leadership as supportability program manager and group manager in Microsoft’s Product Support Services. Prior to joining Microsoft Corporation, Harold served as Director and General Manager in divisions of Acrowood Corporation, and he worked in research groups in Systems Control, Inc., General Electric, and the Boeing Company. He earned his BS, MS, and Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Phillip Joe
Phillip Joe, User Experience Manager, manages user research and design for the Windows New Business and Products Group, aimed at improving the lives those who today do not have access to computers or the internet. After his studies at the Royal College of Art in England, Phillip joined IDEO and was Head of Interaction Design for the London office. He has worked on projects ranging from automobile heads-up displays to UI for a crisis-control center at Hong Kong’s Chep Lap Kok airport. At Microsoft, Phillip has worked as a designer at both MSN and Mobile Platforms Division.

Dina Katabi
Dina Katabi has joined the MIT faculty in March 2003, after completing her PhD at MIT. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department. Dina’s work focuses on wireless networks, network security, routing, and distributed resource management. She has award winning papers in ACM SIGCOMM and Usenix NSDI. Further, she has been awarded a Sloan Fellowship award in 2006, the NBX Career Development chair in 2006, and an NSF CAREER award in 2005. Her doctoral dissertation won an ACM Honorable Mention award and a Sprowls award for academic excellence.

S. Keshav
S. Keshav is an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Tetherless Computing at the School of Computer Science, University of Waterloo, Canada. Earlier in his career has was a researcher at Bell Labs, an Associate Professor at Cornell, and a co-founder of Ensim Corporation, a Silicon Valley startup. He is the author of a widely used graduate textbook on computer networking. His current interests are in infrastructural issues underlying tetherless computing.

Scott Klemmer
Scott Klemmer is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, where he co-directs the Human-Computer Interaction Group and is a member of the new Stanford Institute of Design. He received a dual BA in Art-Semiotics and Computer Science from Brown University in 1999, and an MS and PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 2001 and 2004 respectively. His primary research focus is interaction techniques and design tools that enabled integrated interactions with physical and digital artifacts and environments.

Eddie Kohler
Eddie Kohler is assistant professor of computer science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Kohler hopes to make computer systems radically easier to program. His vision is based on an innovative synthesis of basic systems research and component-based programming language techniques. In application, his work aims to create a more understandable, robust, and secure foundation for systems programming. Kohler is also hopeful that his designation as a Microsoft Fellow will help his university recruit the best and the brightest students.

Todd Landstad
Todd Landstad is a Lead Software Design Engineer in Test for the Microsoft Tablet PC Platform API team. Todd started at Microsoft working on the Windows 95 device drivers test team. Since then he has worked as a Software Design Engineer in Test for a variety of Microsoft products, including Internet Explorer 3.0, Windows 98, and Microsoft Hardware products. Joining the Tablet PC team in mid 2001, he worked on the Tablet PC Platform and created several power toy applications. Todd’s current role is helping to design and ship future Tablet PC technologies that enable ISV’s to create great Tablet PC–related products.

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.

http://research.microsoft.com/~larus/

Dr. Elizabeth Lane Lawley
Elizabeth Lane Lawley is an associate professor of Information Technology at RIT, where she also directs the Lab for Social Computing. During the 2005-2006 academic year, Dr. Lawley was a visiting researcher in Microsoft Research’s Community Technologies Group. Her research interests include social and collaborative search technologies, social behavior in virtual worlds, and gender imbalances in information technology education.

Bongshin Lee
Bongshin Lee came to Microsoft from the University of Maryland where she designed a unique application that shows the trends and patterns of conference publications. One of the questions that the tool answered was which papers and authors are most referenced over time. She received a first place award for her design from the InfoVis 2004 Information Visualization contest. Bongshin now works in the Visualization and Interaction for Business and Entertainment group (VIBE) of Microsoft Research.

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.

Rustan Leino
Dr. K. Rustan M. Leino is a senior researcher at Microsoft Research, where his research centers around programming tools. He is currently working on the design and implementation of the Spec# programming language and its static program verifier. Before joining Microsoft Research, Leino worked as a researcher at DEC/Compaq SRC, where among other things he led the Extended Static Checking for Java (ESC/Java) project, a program checker built on the technology of program verification. His PhD thesis from Caltech (1995) addressed an important specification problem in ESC/Modula-3. Before going to graduate school, Leino worked as a software developer and technical lead in Windows/Windows NT at Microsoft. In his spare time, he plays and records music, substitute teaches step aerobics, and spends time with his wife and four children.

Ken Leppert Jr.
Ken is an attorney in Microsoft’s Legal and Corporate Affairs department. He provides legal support for Microsoft Research, which includes the External Research & Programs group, and Craig Mundie’s Advanced Strategies and Policy organization. Over the past year, much of his time has been spent negotiating agreements for engagements with universities.

Mark Lewin
Mark Lewin is a Program Manager in the External Research & Programs group of Microsoft Research, focusing on compilers, virtual machines, and operating systems. Currently Mark is working to create an integrated shared source research platform based on key Microsoft systems technologies, including SSCLI, Phoenix, and the Windows Research Kernel. Mark also directs Microsoft Research’s partnership with ACM in support of the ACM Student Research Competition program.

Mark is an eleven year veteran of Microsoft. Prior to joining Microsoft Research, he worked closely with the UNIX software community on Microsoft Developer Relations initiatives. Mark was also Program Manager for Microsoft’s RPC technologies, the “Cairo” operating system project, and Microsoft LAN Manager.

http://research.microsoft.com/users/marklew

Fei-Fei Li
Fei-Fei Li is assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Li is interested in vision: the task of making machines see like humans. Just as the art lover’s brain blends individual points of color in an impressionistic painting to create a whole, Fei-Fei is developing algorithms to enable computers to generate comprehensive digital representations of complex objects and scenes. The result will be new tools for personal photo organization, image searches, surveillance, industrial inspections, and eventually assistance for the visually impaired.

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.

Phillip Long
Phillip Long is a Senior Strategist for the Academic Computing Enterprise at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Director of Learning Outreach for MIT iCampus. He provides direction in applying MIT Information Services and Technology resources to support the integration of technology into the curriculum. He leads the MIT iCampus dissemination effort freely sharing MIT developed educational technology tools to support active learning & scalable web services for undergraduate instruction.

Dr. Long received his Ph.D. in Biology from Penn State, & post-doctoral training as an NIMH Fellow at the Institute for Animal Behavior, Rutgers University. He was selected as a National Library of Medicine Fellow in Medical Informatics, while Assoc. Dir. for the Medical Research Library at SUNY Downstate. Dr. Long’s professional activities are numerous: NMC Board (06-09), NMC Project Horizon 2005, 2006 Syllabus Conference Campus Host, 2006 ELI SAC Program Committee Chair, Steven’s Institute of Technology Web-Campus board, past member of the US Army Distance Learning Subcommittee, and many others.

Daniel Makoski
Daniel Makoski is a senior designer in the Windows New Business and Products Group, focused on product innovation for Microsoft’s next billion customers. Daniel studied International Relations at Tufts University and Design at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He’s worked as an Interface Designer at a multimedia studio, Interactive Media Director at an advertising agency, Creative Lead at Studio Archetype, User Experience Manager at Sapient, and Director of Research and Design at an experience design consultancy. Prior to his current role within Windows, Daniel led strategic prototyping at MSN.

Patrick E. Mantey
Professor Patrick E. Mantey is the founding Dean of the Jack Baskin School of Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is now the director of ITI, the Information Technology Institute in the Baskin School of Engineering. Professor Mantey is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and a member of American Society for Engineering Education. He is the UC Santa Cruz affiliate director of CITRIS, and he serves on on the Steering Committee of the UC Industry University Cooperative Research Program. His research interests include multimedia systems, educational applications of computer technology, image and signal processing and sensor networks, simulation and modeling of complex systems, real-time data acquisition and control systems, multimedia and database applications including geographic information systems, and decision support systems.

Simon Mercer
Dr. Mercer has a background in Zoology and has worked in various aspects of bioinformatics over the years. Most recently, he was Director of Bioinformatics and Strategic IT at the National Research Council of Canada’s Institute for Marine Biosciences, with responsibility for the Canadian Bioinformatics Resource, a national network dedicated to bioinformatics research support. He then worked as Director of Software Engineering at Gene Codes Corporation before moving to the External Research & Programs team of Microsoft Research.

Dan Mote
C. D. (Dan) Mote, Jr. started his tenure as president of the University of Maryland, College Park, with the same three-word slogan that has guided his entire academic career: “Quality, Quality, Quality.” After earning his doctorate in Engineering Mechanics from Berkeley in 1963, Mote spent a year as a research fellow at the University of Birmingham in England, then three years as an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh before returning to Berkeley in 1967. Mote served two terms as vice chair of Mechanical Engineering and served as chair from 1987 to 1991. At that time, he was appointed to the FANUC Chair in Mechanical Systems in addition to being named vice chancellor for University Relations, the post he held until accepting the presidency at Maryland in 1998. Mote earned the 1971 Distinguished Teaching Award at the University of California. He has supervised more than 50 doctoral students, including several who are still in progress, and more than 60 master’s theses. Mote intends to teach and work with graduate students at Maryland as well.

Mote’s research activities have focused on dynamic systems, instrumentation, vibration and biomechanics. He has achieved international recognition for his work on gyroscopic systems, including high-speed translating and rotating systems such as circular and band saws, computer memory disks and tapes. He also has researched the biomechanics of skiing injuries leading to the development of safer ski bindings. His research has resulted in more than 300 scholarly publications as well as patents in the United States, Norway, Finland and Sweden.

A registered professional engineer in California, Mote has served in numerous capacities for professional societies, including the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), and is co-editor of its biannual research series, “Skiing Trauma and Safety.” Mote’s work has been supported continuously since 1962 by the National Science Foundation, and he also has received research fellowships from the Royal Norwegian Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science. He was elected to the prestigious National Academy of Engineering in 1988. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers International elected him to honorary membership in 1997, and he has been elected as well to fellow grade in the International Academy of Wood Science, the Acoustical Society of America and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1998 he was awarded the Berkeley Citation. In 1992, he conceived, designed and implemented a $1.1 billion comprehensive capital campaign, which had achieved more than $800 million at the time he left Berkeley.

Craig Mundie
Craig Mundie was named to the new position of chief research and strategy officer of Microsoft in June 2006. He is working closely with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates to assume responsibility for the company’s research and incubation efforts — in anticipation of Gates’ departure from a day-to-day role in Microsoft in July 2008. Mundie also partners with General Counsel Brad Smith to guide Microsoft’s intellectual property and technology policy efforts.

Mundie previously held the position of Microsoft chief technical officer of advanced strategies and policy, in which he worked with Gates to develop comprehensive technical, business and policy strategies for Microsoft on a global scale. In addition, he worked with government and business leaders in Washington, D.C., and across the globe to address the technology and policy issues of security, privacy, telecommunications regulation, intellectual property and software procurement standards. 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

Elizabeth Mynatt
Elizabeth D. Mynatt is Associate Professor in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and she is the director of the GVU Center. There, she directs the research program in Everyday Computing, examining the human-computer interface implications of having computation continuously present in many aspects of everyday life. Themes in her research include supporting informal collaboration and awareness in office environments, enabling creative work and visual communication, and augmenting social processes for managing personal information. Dr. Mynatt is one of the principal researchers in the Aware Home Research Initiative, investigating the design of future home technologies, especially those that enable older adults to continue living independently as opposed to moving to an institutional care setting.

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.

Miguel Nussbaum
Miguel Nussbaum, Ph.D., full professor for Computer Science at the School of Engineering of the Catholic University of Chile, is member of the board of the Chilean National Science Foundation and member of the “Scientific Committee for Latin America, of the UNESCO Forum on Higher Education, Research and Knowledge.” His research areas are Ubiquitous Learning and Knowledge Management with projects in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, United Kingdom, and the United States.

Henry Nyongesa
Professor Henry Nyongesa is the Head of the Department of Computer Science at University of Botswana. His research interests are allied to application of computational intelligence techniques for the design and development of adaptive decision support systems, especially for healthcare applications. He has previously worked at Sheffield University, Brunel University, and Sheffield Hallam University in the United Kingdom.

A. Richard Newton
A. Richard Newton also is UC Berkeley’s Roy W. Carlson Professor of Engineering. A dedicated educator, researcher, and businessman, Dean Newton is internationally recognized for his pioneering research in circuit design methodologies and electronic systems architecture. As dean, he is passionate about employing technology to tackle tough societal problems and about educating the next generation of engineers to develop those technologies. Recipient of numerous awards for his research, he was named to the National Academy of Engineering in 2004, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2006, and won the Phil Kaufman Award, the highest recognition of the EDA Consortium, in 2003. Dean Newton began his career as a student at the University of Melbourne, Australia and continued his work in electronic design automation at Berkeley, earning his Ph.D. in 1978 in the Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences department and joining the faculty the following year. He is cofounder of a number of successful companies, including Cadence Design Systems and Synopsys, and is a Trustee of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology.

John Nordlinger
John Nordlinger is a program manager in Microsoft Research ER&P. 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 Bangalore, India. John then changed focus from geographic regions to solving the problem of declining computer science (CS) enrollment and has been charged with reinvigorating CS curriculum with CS computer gaming technologies and concepts.

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.

Jitendra Padhye
Jitendra Padhye received his PhD in Computer Science from University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2000. His current research focuses on developing tools and techniques for management of corporate WiFi networks. Previously, he worked in the areas of wireless mesh networks and TCP performance modeling.

Melissa Pailthorp
Melissa Pailthorp is a Senior Manager for Community Affairs at Microsoft. Melissa focuses on Microsoft’s Citizenship and digital inclusion efforts in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), as well as humanitarian assistance and select global partnerships. Her skills include program design, development, and expansion, always with an eye toward sustainable innovation. Melissa came to Microsoft two years ago following 15 years of strategy planning and management work in non-profit, corporate, and government settings, domestically and within international development circles.

Andrew Phelps
Andrew Phelps is the Director of Game Design & Development and an Associate Professor of Information Technology at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY. He is the founding faculty member of the Masters of Science in Game Design & Development within the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences, and his work in games programming education has been featured in The New York Times, CNN.com, USA Today, National Public Radio, and several other articles and periodicals. He regularly publishes work exploring collaborative game engines and game engine technology and their use in introductory computing curricula. Professor Phelps is the principle investigator and founder of the Multi-User Programming Pedagogy for Enhancing Traditional Study (M.U.P.P.E.T.S.) project, an endeavor funded by Microsoft Research that seeks to use game worlds and collaborative environments to enhance introductory computing education. This ongoing work has been published in several venues, including ACM SIGGRAPHiournal of Game Development, and the CMP Game Developer’s Conference. He maintains a Web site featuring his work as an educator, artist, programmer, and game addict at andysgi.rit.edu and currently teaches courses in programming, multimedia programming, game engine development, 2D and 3D graphics, and information technology theory.

Andrew Phillips
Andrew Phillips is a post-doctoral researcher at Microsoft Research Cambridge, working on Simulating Biological Systems in the Stochastic Pi-Calculus, in collaboration with Luca Cardelli. He is also a member of the External Research Office, working on tools for Computational Science.

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.

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.

Ravi Poovaiah
Professor Ravi Poovaiah is senior faculty member at the Industrial Design Centre (IDC), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay. He has backgrounds in Mechanical Engineering (IIT Madras), Product Design (IIT Bombay), and Graphic Arts Education (Rhode Island School of Design, RISD, Providence, U.S.). His current pedagogic as well as research interests are located in areas related to Collaborative Learning Environments, Way Finding Systems, Interaction Devices, Visual Information Visualisation, and Designing for Children. Professor Poovaiah has consulted major industry leaders in India such as Indian Oil Corporation, Bharat Petroleum Corporation, Bharat Electronics Limited, Siemens India, and Motorola, among others.

Jane Prey
Jane Prey leads the Tablet Technologies in Higher Education Initiative and the Gender Equity and Pipeline Initiative for Microsoft Research. Before joining Microsoft in 2004, she was a faculty member in the Computer Science Department at the University of Virginia for 11 years. She also spent two years as a Program Manager at National Science Foundation in the Division of Undergraduate Education. She is a member of the IEEE CS Educational Activities Board, and served on the board for ACM SIGCSE. Jane is currently the chair of the Frontiers in Education steering committee and a member of the ACM Education Board.

Dave Probert, Ph.D.
Dave Probert, Kernel Architect, Windows Core Operating Systems Division, has worked in kernel development at Microsoft for over nine years. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) in 1996, where he investigated how to build operating systems without kernels (the SPACE project). Prior to Microsoft, Dave worked for almost 20 years with UNIX internals, starting with version 6 on PDP-11s. He has also worked as a hardware engineer for Burroughs Corporation, Vice President of Software Engineering at Culler Scientific Systems, building a mini-supercomputer and as a systems programmer for the Computer Science department at UCSB, where he had the perfect office, 100 feet from the Pacific ocean and next to a 64-node Sparc-based Meiko parallel computer.

Jaime Puente
Jaime Puente is a Program Manager at Microsoft Research in the External Research & Programs group and is in charge of the External Research Program in Latin America. Prior to that, he spent 13 years as a faculty member in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral (ESPOL) in Ecuador. His favorite subjects to teach were Computer Networking and Microprocessors. While it was difficult to leave academia to join the Industry, Jaime feels that working now for Microsoft Research, he is still involved with the academic world through his work in External Research & Programs. He works closely with faculty and graduate students to create greater opportunities for them to pursue research. In addition, Jaime spent five years at various managing-level positions at the banking industry in Ecuador as Telecommunications and Information Technology manager. This work kept him engaged with leading technology on a very personal level creating greater integration for the banks and the customers. Before to joining Microsoft Research in 2003, Jaime worked as a Technical Project Manager for Latin America in the Professional Services division of Commerce One Inc based out of South Florida.

Jaime Puente was a Fulbright Scholar for his early engagement with Academia. It was during his time as a Fulbright Scholar that he started to lecture and conduct research in a wide variety of academic and professional fields exploring how academia and industry needs intersect. His educational background includes a Master of Science in Computer Engineering from Iowa State University, and a Masters of Business Administration and an Electronics Engineering degree both from ESPOL in Ecuador.

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.

http://research.microsoft.com/~qadeer

Arkady Retik
Arkady Retik is the Windows Academic Program Manager in the Source Asset Management (SAM) team, Microsoft, Redmond. Before SAM, he worked on several development projects in the Server’s Windows Management Infrastructure group. Prior to joining Microsoft in 2000, Arkady served for a decade as a researcher, faculty member and Professor in several universities, mostly in the U.K. He taught and researched a variety of subjects in computing and engineering. Arkady established and directed the Virtual Construction Simulation Research group at the University of Strathclyde, pioneering research in advanced visualization and VR. He holds a DSc in Computer Aided Design and Planning from the Technion Institute of Technology, from where he also has BSc and MSc. He was recently made a Visiting Honorary Professor at Glasgow Caledonian University.

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.

Steve Richardson
Steve Richardson is the manager of the Machine Translation (MT) Project and a Principal Researcher in the Natural Language Processing (NLP) Group of Microsoft Research, which he joined at its inception in 1991. Steve worked previously at IBM for over a decade, including at its Bethesda Development Lab and at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center. He received BS and MA degrees in computer science and linguistics from Brigham Young University and a PhD in computer science from the City University of New York. He began his career in computational linguistics working on MT over 30 years ago and has been involved in research and development of MT and related NLP technologies ever since.

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.

http://research.microsoft.com/~dcr/

George Robertson
George Robertson is an ACM Fellow and a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, where he does research on 3D user interfaces and information visualization. Before coming to Microsoft, he was a Principal Scientist at Xerox PARC, working on 3D interactive animation interfaces for intelligent information access. He was the architect of the Information Visualizer. In the past, he has made significant contributions to machine learning, multimedia message systems, hypertext systems, operating systems, and programming languages.

Roni Rosenfeld
Roni Rosenfeld is Professor of Language Technologies, Machine Learning, and Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He received a B.Sc. in Mathematics and Physics from Tel-Aviv University in 1985, and a M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon in 1990 and 1994, respectively. He is a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow, and a recipient of the Allen Newell Medal for Research Excellence. Prof. Rosenfeld’s current research interests are in computational molecular virology, molecular evolution, human-machine speech communication, and the use of speech and language technologies to aid international development. He has also performed research in statistical language modeling, machine learning, and speech recognition. He has published over 100 scientific articles in academic journals and conferences.

Richard M. Russell
Richard M. Russell was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in August 2002 as Associate Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in the Executive Office of the President. In that capacity he is Deputy Director for Technology, charged with the technology portfolio — which includes departments in Technology, Telecommunications and Information Technology, and Space and Aeronautics. In addition to his role at OSTP, Mr. Russell serves as the Senior Director for Technology and Telecommunications for the National Economic Council. Congress established OSTP in 1976 with a broad mandate to advise the President and others within the Executive Office of the President on the effects of science and technology on domestic and international affairs. The 1976 Act also authorizes OSTP to lead an interagency effort to develop and to implement sound science and technology policies and budgets and to work with the private sector, state and local governments, the science and higher education communities, and other nations toward this end.

Michael Sagan
For nine years, Michael Sagan has worked as Senior Designer and Technology Principal for Trek Bicycle. In that time, he has been the Industrial Design lead for pro team projects since 1997. Michael works with Trek’s Advanced Concept Group and Industrial Design Group: a multi-talented staff of designers, engineers, and other bicycle experts to bring the most advanced cycling projects to life. Trek provides cutting edge technology to not only the Discovery Pro Cycling team, but into the same machines that can be purchased at any independent Trek dealer. Past projects include: Trek Madone Series, TTx and Time Trial machines, Pilot, Top Fuel, and the Trek 5200. Having studied Industrial Design at University of Illinois-Chicago, and graduating from Northern Illinois University in 1993 with a Bachelor of General Studies degree in Design Engineering and Technology and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, Michael applies a unique perspective to the product development process at Trek by coming to the cycling world from the architecture, consumer product design and packaging industries.

Lucy Sanders
Lucy Sanders is CEO and co-founder of the National Center for Women & Information Technology and also serves as Executive in Residence at the ATLAS Institute at the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU). She has an extensive industry background, having worked in development and executive positions at AT&T Bell Labs, Lucent Bell Labs, and Avaya Labs for over 20 years, where she specialized in systems-level software and solutions (multi-media communication and customer relationship management). In 1996, Lucy was awarded the Bell Labs Fellow Award, the highest technical accomplishment bestowed at the company, and she has six patents in the communications technology area. Lucy serves on several boards, including the Engineering Advisory Council and the Department of Computer Science Advisory Board at CU, the Denver Public Schools Computer Magnet Advisory Board, and several corporate boards. In 2004 she was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Department of Engineering at CU. Lucy also is Program Chair for the 2006 Grace Hopper Conference. Lucy received her B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science from Louisiana State University and the University of Colorado at Boulder, respectively.

John SanGiovanni
With a background that includes mobile computing and 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 he worked in entertainment at the Walt Disney Company. John’s current research focus is into 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 that mobile devices and wireless technologies will transform communication, entertainment, and learning.

www.johnsangiovanni.com

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.

Kevin Schofield
Kevin Schofield is General Manager for Strategy and Communications at Microsoft Research. His organization drives consensus on technical strategy and priorities for Microsoft’s research efforts. He is also responsible for developing Microsoft Research’s relationships with academia, customers, press, analysts, and Microsoft’s own product groups. Mr. Schofield joined Microsoft in 1988, and has worked in Microsoft Research since 1997. Over the course of his tenure at Microsoft, he worked in both development and program management for a number of products, including networking, operating systems, MSN, and multimedia authoring tools.

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.

http://research.microsoft.com/users/schulte/

Sean Sedwards
Sean Sedwards is a researcher at the Microsoft Research – University of Trento. Centre for Computational and Systems Biology in Trento, Italy. His interests include the simulation of biological processes using multiset rewriting techniques.

Dr. Ajanta Sen
Dr. Ajanta Sen is an independent researcher and analyst of development issues in technology and design. She received her doctorate (Ph.D.) in Development Planning from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, India. Dr. Sen is a visiting faculty member for Interaction Design at the Industrial Design Centre (IDC), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, India, emphasizing cultural factors in new media and traditional technology practices to inform design methodology. She has held various positions as a consultant, such as International Director, Project Solar Eclipse (1997 & ongoing), a cross-cultural collaborative project on the Internet (with focus on children and underserved communities); investigator and strategist for a rural computing project at Motorola Research India Lab (2005 and ongoing); design strategist with major petroleum companies such as the Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) and Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), India and retail setups such as the Khadim’s Group, India; investigator with Design Expo projects at the Social Computing group, Microsoft Research, Redmond, U.S. (2003 and 2004). Dr. Sen has also been a guest lecturer at Falmouth College of Arts (FCA), design school in Cornwall, U.K.; City Gallery, Leicester, U.K.; University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Wales, U.K.; University of New South Wales (NSW), Sydney, Australia; University of Feira de Santana (UEFS), Bahia, Brasil; and West Dean College, U.K., among others.

Dr. Clarisse Sieckenius de Souza
Clarisse Sieckenius de Souza is Professor of Human-Computer Interaction in the Informatics Department of PUC-Rio. With a PhD in Linguistics and a history of research in natural language processing and text generation, she developed a semiotic theory of HCI called semiotic engineering. The theory was published in 2005 by The MIT Press, in a book called The Semiotic Engineering of Human-Computer Interaction. Clarisse is a pioneer of HCI in Brazil. She has supervised 15 PhD students, most of whom are now faculty in various Brazilian universities.

http://www-di.inf.puc-rio.br/~clarisse/

Beth Simon
Beth Simon is a faculty member in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of California, San Diego. Beth’s interests include educational technology, Tablet PCs in education, and multi-institutional computer science education research.

http://www.cs.ucsd.edu/~esimon

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.

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.

John D. Spencer
John D. Spencer received a Bachelor Science in Business Administration, University of Central Florida and an MBA in International Business from the American Graduate School of International Management (Thunderbird), Glendale Arizona. After extended military service in the 60’s, John held positions from 1976 thru 1994 with TRW Inc., Revere Copper & Brass, Pullman Incorporated, ,Bell Laboratories, Argonne Laboratories, Hughes Helicopters Inc., and the McDonnell Douglas Corporation as an information technologist, developer, and systems manager. John has been with Microsoft for eleven years most which has been with Microsoft Research, university relations focused.

Alex Szalay
Alexander Szalay is Alumni Centennial Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the Johns Hopkins University. His research interests are Multicolor Properties of Galaxies, Galaxy Evolution; The Large Scale Power Spectrum of Fluctuations; Gravitational Lensing; and Pattern recognition and Classification Problems. His projects include The SDSS Project and Large Scaleable Databases.

Richard Szeliski
Richard Szeliski leads the Interactive Visual Media Group at Microsoft Research, which does research in digital and computational photography, video scene analysis, 3-D computer vision, and image-based rendering. He received a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, in 1988. He joined Microsoft Research in 1995. Prior to Microsoft, he worked at Bell-Northern Research, Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, the Artificial Intelligence Center of SRI International, and the Cambridge Research Lab of Digital Equipment Corporation.

Dr. Szeliski has published over 100 research papers in computer vision, computer graphics, medical imaging, and neural nets, as well as the book Bayesian Modeling of Uncertainty in Low-Level Vision. He was a Program Committee Chair for ICCV’2001 and the 1999 Vision Algorithms Workshop, and served as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence and on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Computer Vision.

Katalin Szlavecz
Katalin Szlavecz is an Associate Research Scientist and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences in The Johns Hopkins University. Her areas of interest include Organic Matter Decomposition, Trophic Structure, Animal Ecology, Biological Diversity, Ecosystem Ecology, Forest Ecology, Invertebrate Biology, Soil Science, and Zoology.

Stewart Tansley
Stewart is responsible for Robotics and Embedded Systems as part of External Research & Programs in Microsoft Research. 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 Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence applied to Engineering from the University of Technology, Loughborough, U.K. He has published a variety of papers on artificial intelligence and network management, he has several patents, and he has co-authored a book on software engineering for artificial intelligence applications.

http://research.microsoft.com/~stansley

Hugh Teegan
Hugh Teegan is a Mobile Devices architect at Microsoft focusing on the Smartphone. Prior to his nine years at Microsoft, he did two startups and worked on communications protocols for various companies in Europe and the US. Born in Ireland and a graduate of TCD, he now lives in Washington State where he is an ardent hiker and sloppy rower.

Marvin Theimer
Marvin Theimer is the software architect for the High Performance Computing group in the Windows Server group. His focus is on both HPC cluster computing as well as Grid computing. Marvin received a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1986. He then spent two years with the QuickSilver distributed operating system project at IBM’s Almaden Research Center. Following that, he spent almost ten years at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center exploring the topics of ubiquitous computing and weakly consistent, replicated systems. He then joined Microsoft Research and spent five years exploring topics in peer-to-peer file systems and global-scale peer-to-peer event notification systems. Marvin moved from research to join the Advanced Web Services product team in the fall of 2003. His focus there was on defining and prototyping a Web services-based Grid computing architecture. He moved over to the Windows Server High Performance Computing group in September of 2004, where he is responsible for defining the overall architecture of future versions of Microsoft’s high performance compute cluster products.

Bo Thiesson
Bo Thiesson is a Researcher in the Machine Learning and Applied Statistics (MLAS) group at Microsoft Research, which he joined in 1996. He received his Masters (1991) in Computer Sciences and his PhD (1996) in Statistics from Aalborg University, Denmark. His work is primarily inspired by the fields of statistics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, which has allowed him to work on many interesting applications at Microsoft Research. Most recently, his work has focused on scalable learning algorithms, personalization for handwriting recognition, language modeling, time-series analysis, video-tooning, anti-spam filtering, and smart text input methods.

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.

Tandy Trower
Tandy Trower has a 24-year history with new products and technology initiatives at Microsoft bringing to market new products as diverse as Microsoft Flight Simulator and Microsoft Windows. In addition, as a strong proponent of the importance of design in human-computer interaction, he has contributed to the company’s investment in improving its user interfaces, founding the company’s first usability labs and product design roles. He continues to investigate and drive strategic new technology directions for the company and incubating new projects.

Matt Uyttendaele
Matt is a Research Software Development Engineer at Microsoft Research, Redmond. He manages a software development group, does computer vision research, and transfers technology to product groups. Matt received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He worked at AT&T Bell Labs from 1991 to 1996. He has been at Microsoft since 1996, first in the Windows group, then for the past six years in Microsoft Research. His research interests include computational photography and computer vision.

Andy van Dam
Andy van Dam is the Thomas J. Watson Jr., University Professor of Technology and Education and Professor of Computer Science at Brown University and was recently named the Director of the Microsoft Center for Research on Pen-Centric Computing at Brown. He is a co-founder of Brown’s Computer Science Department and was its first Chairman, from 1979 to 1985. His research includes work on computer graphics, hypermedia systems, post-WIMP user interfaces, including pen-centric computing, and educational software.

Evelyne Viegas
Evelyne Viegas is responsible for the Internet Technologies and Cultures initiative in the External Research & Programs team at Microsoft Research in Redmond WA, U.S. She also works on the academic engagement for Microsoft Live Labs, a recently funded lab, Microsoft Research and MSN joint project. Prior to her present role, Evelyne has been working as a Technical, Lead, and Program Manager at Microsoft delivering Natural Language Processing components to projects for MSN, Office, and Windows. Prior to joining Microsoft, and after completing her PhD in France, she worked as a principal investigator at the Computing Research Laboratory in New Mexico on an ontology-based Machine Translation project. She is the editor of Computational Lexical Semantics with Cambridge University Press and Breadth and Depth of Semantic Lexicons with Kluwer Academic Press.

Mitch Walker
Mitch Walker is a Program Manager for the XNA Framework. He’s been with Microsoft for 8 years where he’s been a Consultant, Evangelist and Program Manager. His passion for .NET, developer tools and games lead him to the XNA team where he gets to use all three in helping develop a platform that makes it easier to write multi-platform games for Windows and Xbox 360.

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.

http://research.microsoft.com/~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.

Yi-Min Wang
Yi-Min Wang is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, Redmond, where he manages the Cybersecurity and Systems Management Group and leads the Strider project. Yi-Min received his B.S. degree from National Taiwan University in 1986. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1993, worked at AT&T Bell Labs from 1993 to 1997, and joined Microsoft in 1998. His research interests include security, systems management, dependability, home networking, and distributed systems.

Brad Weed
Brad Weed is currently the User Experience Manager for Microsoft Office. His team is responsible for researching and designing useful, usable, desirable, and feasible interactions that delight both end users and customers. Brad has been at Microsoft and in Office since 1992 where he started as a designer working on Word and Windows 3.1. He has since built a team of User Experience Designers and Researchers that have helped shape each every release of Microsoft Office. Previous to Microsoft, Brad worked at Wavefront Technologies (now Alias Software) as a user interface designer and engineer. He studied computer cartography as a Geography major at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Mark Wilkinson, Ph.D.
Mark Wilkinson earned his Bachelors degree in genetics from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, 1990, with an emphasis on developmental genetics. In 1996 he received his Ph.D. in Botany from the University of British Columbia. He followed a post-doctoral program under the Human Frontiers Science Program at the Max Planck Institut fuer Zuechtungsforschung in Cologne Germany, during which he made a career shift into Bioinformatics. He pursued a second post-doctoral fellowship at the National Research Council of Canada’s Plant Biotechnology Institute emphasizing bioinformatic analysis. He then worked as a freelance bioinformatics consultant before joining the iCAPTURE Team at the University of British Columbia, and continues working in the area of bioinformatics with a particular focus on data integration and machine-readable knowledge representation.

Hugh Williams
Hugh Williams is a Senior Software Design Engineer at Windows Live Search, where he currently leads the multimedia search development team. He has published over 80 papers and patents on aspects of search, specializing in the areas of information retrieval, computational biology, and search architectures. He is the author of Web Database Applications with PHP and MySQL, a best-selling O’Reilly book, and has a PhD from RMIT University in Australia.

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.

Alec Wolman
Alec Wolman is a researcher in the Networking group at Microsoft Research, Redmond. His research interests include mobile and wireless computing, distributed systems, Internet technologies, operating systems, and computer architecture. He received a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Washington in October, 2002. Before graduate school, he worked for DEC at the Cambridge Research Lab.

Curtis Wong
Curtis Wong is a Principal Researcher of the Next Media group at Microsoft Research. Prior to joining Microsoft, he was Director of Content at Intel, General Manager of Corbis Productions, and Interactive Producer at the Voyager Company. Curtis is one of the pioneers of interactive media creating some of leading examples of emerging media, such as the Criterion Collection of feature films on laserdisc; Multimedia Beethoven, A Passion for Art, and Leonardo da Vinci’s on CD-ROMs; and ArtMuseum.net, PBS’s Commanding Heights, and Age of AIDS for enhanced broadband television. As a researcher, he has been developing next generation media prototypes and technologies for future products. Curtis serves on the board of Trustees for the Rhode Island School of Design and the Seattle Art Museum as well as the advisory boards of PBS Kids, the National Constitution Center and is a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences jury for the annual Emmy Awards.

Steven R. Woodward
Steven Woodward is one of the key individuals working with the industry and Microsoft partners to better understand the Identity Metasystem and InfoCard. He has briefed many of the largest eCommerce sites, governments, and those in the financial industry on how this technology can be applied to solve their current security challenges on the Internet. He has gained insight into a broad cross section of industries and the challenges they are trying to solve with respect to user authentication and identity theft. A former developer and program manager, Steve has been a Technical Evangelist for 7 of his 10 years at Microsoft.

Qi Zhang
Qi Zhang has spent the past three years working on East Asia