Position: Researcher in the Applied Sciences Group at Microsoft

Do people call you mad scientist, inventor, wizard, or creative? Do you like building things in your basement on your free time? Are you passionate about research and making it a reality through product development? Do you want to create something new, something innovative, something nobody has ever thought of or seen, yet they cannot live without? Do you work best in a frameless environment with lots of ambiguity? Do you have the ability and are passionate about straddling the line between research and engineering? Do you have a knack for creating things?

 Join the Applied Science Group and help imagine and create the future of Microsoft’s hardware and software businesses. In a lot of ways this is a dream job, a position that is rare at Microsoft and it demands only the top visionary and technical talent. We seek very creative, broadly skilled technologists, with a talent for unconventional thinking and a track record of bringing innovative ideas to fruition.

Members of the Applied Sciences Group are expected to be active participants in both the Microsoft research and the product groups company wide. The ideal candidate is one that straddles the world of being a world class researcher and a rock star developer. He or she is one that is excited, passionate, and driven to make an impact in people’s lives. They have a vision and want to carry it. They have the ability to wear multiple hats like engineering, business, and research.

For this opening, we are looking for an Electrical, Computer Engineering or HCI researcher who is interested in developing new interaction experiences for portable computers. The candidate must be able to understand and be adept at working with embedded and mobile hardware, all kinds of sensors, cameras, and application specific silicon implementations of cutting edge image processing and algorithms. He or she will work with a multi-interdisciplinary team of researchers from computer visions, optics, and hardware. The goal is to create the next generation of hardware and user experiences. We want devices to know where they are in the world, augment the user’s experiences, and enable a rich input/output framework.

You will need a good eye for identifying interesting areas for investigation, creativity to generate compelling new concepts, and the ability to quickly test and express these concepts in the form of functional prototypes. You will interact with multiple groups and disciplines within Microsoft, and you should be comfortable having substantive conversations on technical, user experience, and business matters.

 The considerable creative and work style freedom inherent in this job will require a candidate with excellent judgment in selecting concepts to pursue and allocate time for their development. The ideal candidate will be able to thrive in an entrepreneurial environment, be self-driven, self-directed, and handle ambiguity well.

QUALIFICATIONS:
For the Electrical Engineering position
 • Skilled at designing analog and digital circuits, and embedded software. Adept at CAD tools, schematic capture.
• Deep experience
 o Digitizer hardware, pen and touch.
 o Display electronics and driving schemes.
 o Camera hardware, interfaces and system design.
 o Sensors of all kinds, inertial, GPS, Doppler, optical, ultra-sonics.
 • Creative in coming up with ideas and cleaver solutions to problems to turning around and building them.
• Developing and researching cutting edge hardware and working with a team of talented computer vision researchers to implement real-time processing in embedded hardware. • Ability to be applied: passion for both engineering and research.
 • Experience working in a research lab developing/researching new technologies.
• Entrepreneur with the ability to work in ambiguous uncharted areas and having a knack for picking the right direction.

 EDUCATION:
Relevant graduate degree preferred, however, exceptional candidates with a proven track record of innovation will also be considered.

Digital Visions for Fashion + Textiles: Made in Code

My friend Jane Harris and I are helping the European Commission in Brussels. She just told me that she co-wrote with Sarah E. Braddock Clarke an exploration on the creative influence of computer technology on fashion and textiles, featuring forward-thinking practitioners at the vanguard of these developments. I can't wait to read more of it. Here is a link to her book Digital Visions for Fashion and Textiles: Made in Code.
 

The invention of the Jacquard loom in eighteenth-century France paved the way for computing and revolutionary change. From its punch-card origins, code has evolved to define and enable new methods in design, making, visualization, production and communication, achieving the previously unimaginable. Digital Visions for Fashion + Textiles: Made in Code considers how computing has reinvented image, material and structural processes, highlighting newly advancing 2D, 3D and interactive output. Pioneering shifts of practice have developed from hybrid technical and creative collaborations. Digital and analogue fusions are defining new contexts for the innovative fabrication of surfaces, products and environments. Twenty-two of the most forward-thinking practitioners, established and emerging, who have embraced developing digital technologies are profiled. Featured are household names, such as Hussein Chalayan, Prada and Issey Miyake, early pioneers (Vibeke Riisberg, Peter Struycken) and more independent, avant-garde individuals (Iris van Herpen, Casey Reas, Tom Gallant). Complete with a reference section and bibliographic information, this unique and richly illustrated book is the perfect resource and inspiration for designers, students, industry professionals, and anyone looking for an exploration of how computer technology has creatively permeated fashion, textiles and related digital sectors.

DIY 3D motion!

Anatoly Churikov did an internship with me last summer at the Microsoft Applied Sciences Group. Soon I will be able to talk about his cool project he did there, but right now I want to share his newest project, the duo3d! It is a Do-it-yourself kit to do super precise 3D motion. He and his teammates will launch a kickstarter campaign soon, stay tuned!

 

Cool! I am in Marie Claire Italy!

I just found out that Marie Claire Italy featured me in their December issue!

 

 It says:"

Le stelle di domani

25 come gli anni di Marie Claire: ecco i (nostri) talenti visionari che guardano al futuro."

Cati Boulanger, la più giovane ricercatrice Microsoft. Perché. Noi siamo alle prese col precariato, lei maneggia desktop 3D superfuturistici. Not bad, and I am carrying my baby!

Modular electronic coolness!

Another really cool project from fellow MIT Media Lab friend Michael Rosenblatt. Modular electronic blocks to make things that move and sense, with various level of difficulty. I can't wait to try the kit with my daughters ;) Congrats to the team!!

It is on kickstarter, but be quick, you can get the early first kit

Here is the video

Super neat robot that solves Rubik’s cubes

Great idea for Halloween!

Spiders trapped in a maquette of a building, then retro-projected from the inside of the building. Very scary!!

spider projection from Friedrich van Schoor on Vimeo.

I need more music in the office!

My new desktop 3D printer (for the fall!)

Impressive Lego Contraption