News & features
Awards | Computing Research Association
Martez Mott receives CRA-WP Skip Ellis Early Career Award
Mott focuses on designing, building, and evaluating novel intelligent interactive technologies that are guided by scientific understandings of people’s experiences with computers and information.
What’s Your Story: Jacki O’Neill
| Johannes Gehrke and Jacki O'Neill
Jacki O’Neill saw an opportunity to expand Microsoft research efforts to Africa. She now leads Microsoft Research Africa, Nairobi (formerly MARI). O’Neill talks about the choices that got her there, the lab’s impact, and how living abroad is good for…
Ideas: Language technologies for everyone with Kalika Bali
| Kalika Bali and Gretchen Huizinga
The new series “Ideas” debuts with guest Kalika Bali. The speech and language tech researcher talks sci-fi and its impact on her career, the design thinking philosophy behind her research, and the “outrageous idea” she had to work with low-resource…
The future of work, unbound: 2020 and the strange new mobility of space and time
| Ken Hinckley
For those of us who have transitioned to working from home over the course of the last year, we must navigate a strange new manifestation of mobility. Far-flung colleagues appear almost magically in grid format on a screen right in…
In the news | Engadget
Microsoft explores realistic VR haptics with a wrist-mounted gadget
With recent headsets like the Oculus Quest 2 and Valve Index, VR headsets have never been in a better place from a graphical fidelity standpoint. But as much as the touch controllers that come with those devices have improved as…
Physics matters: Haptic PIVOT, an on-demand controller, simulates physical forces such as momentum and gravity
| Mar Gonzalez Franco, Eyal Ofek, and Mike Sinclair
When you reach out an empty hand to pick an apple from a tree, you’re met with a variety of sensations—the firmness of the apple as you grip it, the resistance from the branch as you tug the apple free,…
In the news | MSPoweruser
Microsoft Research shows off their novel VR cane controller again
Microsoft Research has released another video of their previously demonstrated haptics-enabled cane which allows blind people to navigate VR.
Career Award | National Academy of Engineering
Abigail Sellen elected to National Academy of Engineering
Abigail (Abi) Sellen, Deputy Director and Principal Researcher, was elected as an international member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), “for contributions that ensure consideration of human capabilities in the design of computer systems.” The NAE membership honors those who…
Meredith (Merrie) Ringel Morris, Sr. Principal Researcher & Research Manager, and Steven Drucker, Partner Research Manager, were both inducted into the CHI Academy. The CHI Academy is an honorary group of individuals who have made substantial contributions to the field…