Bill Gates knows that technology can help people realize their dreams and he knows that Carnegie Mellon has the right talent and approach to make dreams come true.
“Carnegie Mellon has made phenomenal contributions in engineering and computer science,” Gates said in his first visit to campus in February. “Microsoft has benefited phenomenally from the relationship we’ve had with Carnegie Mellon."
“The joint research that’s gone on and some of the great people who have joined Microsoft, including people like Rich Rashid . . . Anoop Gupta . . . Kai-Fu Lee . . . Gordon Bell . . . and many, many other people are continuing their relationship with Carnegie Mellon as they help Microsoft define new software.”
Gates said Microsoft’s biggest challenges lie in areas in which Carnegie Mellon is a world-class leader—artificial intelligence, user-friendly interfaces, e-commerce, ubiquitous computing, speech recognition, computer gaming and trustworthy computing, “the most important issue in software today.”
“What Microsoft looks for are people . . . who are going to have an incredible impact on society,” Gates said.
He came to the right place. Consider:
* Rick Rashid, former computer science professor, joined Microsoft in 1991 to establish Microsoft Research, a $6.8 billion a year operation, which he modeled after our world-renowned School of Computer Science.
* Anoop Gupta (S ’82, CS ’86), former faculty member at Carnegie Mellon, is Microsoft’s corporate VP of the Real-Time Collaboration Business Unit. His unit guides the company’s efforts in instant messaging, PC-telephony and Web conferencing.
* Kai-Fu Lee (S ’88) is Microsoft’s VP of the User Interface Technology Division. As an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon, he developed Sphinx, the world’s first system to recognize speech from any user. He also developed the computer program that plays the game Othello and defeated the human world champion.
* Gordon Bell, former computer science faculty member, is a senior researcher at Microsoft’s Telepresence Research Group in San Francisco.
Bill Gates knows that technology can help people realize their dreams and he knows that Carnegie Mellon has the right talent and approach to make dreams come true.
“Carnegie Mellon has made phenomenal contributions in engineering and computer science,” Gates said in his first visit to campus in February. “Microsoft has benefited phenomenally from the relationship we’ve had with Carnegie Mellon.
“The joint research that’s gone on and some of the great people who have joined Microsoft, including people like Rich Rashid . . . Anoop Gupta . . . Kai-Fu Lee . . . Gordon Bell . . . and many, many other people are continuing their relationship with Carnegie Mellon as they help Microsoft define new software.”
Gates said Microsoft’s biggest challenges lie in areas in which Carnegie Mellon is a world-class leader—artificial intelligence, user-friendly interfaces, e-commerce, ubiquitous computing, speech recognition, computer gaming and trustworthy computing, “the most important issue in software today.”
“What Microsoft looks for are people . . . who are going to have an incredible impact on society,” Gates said.
* Microsoft is a founder of Carnegie Mellon’s West Coast Campus.
* Microsoft has contributed $3,699,485 to the university since 1985.
Before speaking to the university community, Gates participated in a roundtable discussion focusing on Carnegie Mellon research. Joining Gates were President Jared L. Cohon; Provost Mark Kamlet; University Professor of Computer Science and Robotics Raj Reddy; Dean of the School of Computer Science Randy Bryant; Associate Dean and Professor Jeannette Wing; Professor of Computer Science, Technology and Policy Latanya Sweeney; Associate Dean Peter Lee; Professor and former School of Computer Science Dean Jim Morris; and Vice Provost and Chief Information Officer Joel Smith.
Following his talk he witnessed several demonstrations of technology developed at Carnegie Mellon, including The ESP Game, the HazMat Game, GRACE the Robot and the Women@SCS Outreach Roadshow.
The ESP Game: Microsoft Graduate Student Fellow Luis von Ahn:
Imagine if people did useful work while playing online games. The ESP Game makes this possible: when people play they help provide meaningful labels for images on the Web. Attaching proper labels to images would allow for more accurate image search engines, would improve the accessibility of sites, and would help Web browsers block pornographic images. Our approach is simple but novel: rather than using inferior computer vision techniques, we encourage people to do the work for us by taking advantage of their desire to be entertained. In fewer than six months, running on a graduate student’s old computer and without advertisement, the ESP Game has collected over 2.4 million labels for images on the Web.
HazMat Game, Entertainment Technology Center
The HazMat Training simulator, a Microsoft-funded project previously known as Biohazard, uses video game methods and technology to augment the training of the Fire Department of New York City’s Hazardous Materials and Anti-Terror teams. The simulator allows instructors to repeatedly drill students in tactical situations that would either be too time-consuming or too expensive to set up on a regular basis. The learning is instructor-centered, using the game as a focal point for practice and discussion.
GRACE the Robot
In order to interact naturally with people who are not trained roboticists, it is highly desirable for robots to follow the same set of social rules as humans. This makes the interaction more predictable and, thus, more comfortable and natural. Such types of social interaction include both conversational interaction and spatial interaction (e.g., standing in line, passing on the right in hallways). Carnegie Mellon is developing several robot systems to investigate these ideas, including GRACE, an autonomous mobile robot designed to compete in the AAAI Robot Challenge. GRACE uses natural language interaction, an expressive face, and multiple sensors (laser and cameras) to ask for directions and navigate conference halls.
Women@SCS Outreach Roadshow
The Women@SCS Outreach Roadshow is a presentation by a group of women undergraduates and graduates in the School of Computer Science, who talk about their early thoughts on Computer Science, why and how they began studying the area, their current experiences, what computer science means to them now, and their future hopes and expectations. The presentation includes a slide show, Q and A interaction, and a simple demo. The Roadshow challenges traditional stereotypes of computer science to show the breadth of fields that computer science can encompass. It aims to increase the visibility of women in computer science.
