Andy Wilson
Partner Research Manager
About
I am a partner researcher at Microsoft Research (opens in new tab). I study ways to apply sensing techniques, signal processing and display technologies to enable new modes of human-computer interaction. These days I am focused on interactive multimodal systems, generative AI techniques to create virtual worlds, ubiquitous computing, and mixed reality.
I obtained my BA at Cornell University, and PhD at the MIT Media Laboratory (opens in new tab). At Microsoft I contributed to our earliest efforts at commercializing depth cameras, leading to Kinect. Before that I worked extensively on the original Surface interactive table.
You can view videos of my work and collaborators’ work on my YouTube channel (opens in new tab).
News
November 2024: Our 2007 paper “Gestures without Libraries, Toolkits or Training: A $1 Recognizer for User Interface Prototypes (opens in new tab)” is awarded the UIST Lasting Impact award. Sometimes simple things can have surprising impact!
November 2022: Our 2011 paper “OmniTouch: Wearable Multitouch Interaction Everywhere (opens in new tab)” is awarded the UIST Lasting Impact award.
November 2020: My ACM ISS 2020 paper “Combating the Spread of Coronavirus by Modeling Fomites with Depth Cameras (opens in new tab)” won Best Paper Honorable Mention, and the People’s Choice Best Demo Award.
February 2018: I am honored to be elected to the CHI Academy (opens in new tab).
November 2015: I am the proud recipient of ACM ICMI’s Lasting Impact Award for my 2004 paper “TouchLight: an imaging touch screen and display for gesture-based interaction (opens in new tab)“.
At BUILD 2015 we introduced the RoomAlive Toolkit (opens in new tab), an open source SDK that calibrates multiple Kinect and multple projectors to enable interactive projection mapping experiences like that of RoomAlive and IllumiRoom. Ben Lower and I introduce the Toolkit and describe some of its components in a Channel9 video available here (opens in new tab). Source code is on GitHub here (opens in new tab).
Professional Activities
I’ve been active in the UIST (opens in new tab), CHI (opens in new tab), ACM Interactive Surfaces and Spaces (ISS) (opens in new tab), Siggraph, ICMI, and Ubicomp academic communities, where I’ve have had the pleasure of serving on various program committees. I co-chaired IEEE Tabletop 2007, chaired ACM UIST 2009 and ACM SUI 2014. I was the program chair for UIST 2018. I tend to publish under the name “Andrew D. Wilson (opens in new tab)“.