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<\/h3>\n<\/h3>\nIf you want an inside look at how a research idea goes from project to prototype to product, you should hang out with Gavin Jancke (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> for a while. He\u2019s the General Manager of Engineering for MSR Redmond where he created \u2013 and runs \u2013 the Central Engineering Group (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>. Over the past two decades, he\u2019s overseen more than seven hundred software and hardware engineering projects, from internal MSR innovations to Microsoft product group partnerships.<\/p>\n Today, Gavin takes us on a guided tour of the research engineering landscape and the engineering pipeline, recounting some of Central Engineering\u2019s greatest hits. He also explains how the lab determines which projects get engineering resources, and reveals how one of his own projects ended up in the Museum of Modern Art.<\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke:\u00a0So generally, we get engineering proposals from the researchers which are highly ambitious, and having done enough of these over the years, we\u2019re kind of able to identify which ones have the highest chance of success. And so this is how we determine what we\u2019re going to invest in and obviously there\u2019s an opportunity of, this is really going to be a paradigm shift in terms of affecting a new underserved population, new technology that creates new experiences for humanity, that kind of stuff.<\/p>\n Host:\u00a0<\/b>You\u2019re listening to the Microsoft Research Podcast, a show that brings you closer to the cutting-edge of technology research and the scientists behind it. I\u2019m your host, Gretchen Huizinga.<\/b><\/p>\n Host: If you want an inside look at how a research idea goes from project to prototype to product, you should hang out with Gavin\u00a0<\/b>Jancke<\/b>\u00a0for a while. He\u2019s the General Manager of Engineering for MSR Redmond where he created \u2013 and runs \u2013 the Central Engineering Group. Over the past two decades, he\u2019s overseen more than seven hundred software and hardware engineering projects, from internal MSR innovations to Microsoft product group partnerships.<\/b><\/p>\n Today, Gavin takes us on a guided tour of the research engineering landscape and the engineering pipeline, recounting some of Central Engineering\u2019s greatest hits. He also explains how the lab determines which projects get engineering resources, and reveals how one of his\u00a0<\/b>own<\/i><\/b>\u00a0projects ended up in the Museum of Modern Art.<\/b>\u00a0<\/b>That and much more on this episode of the Microsoft Research Podcast.<\/b><\/p>\n Host: Gavin\u00a0<\/b>Jancke<\/b>, welcome to the podcast.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: Thanks, Gretchen, for hosting me.<\/p>\n Host: You\u2019re the\u00a0<\/b>G<\/b>eneral\u00a0<\/b>M<\/b>anager and\u00a0<\/b>E<\/b>ngineering\u00a0<\/b>R<\/b>esearch\u00a0<\/b>M<\/b>anager of MSR\u2019s\u00a0<\/b>Central Engineering and because this group is so different from the others<\/b>\u00a0here at MSR, I want to split the situating into two parts. So first, give us a really short elevator pitch for what you do in Central Engineering and why your group exists.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: Right, so MSR\u2019s core mission, obviously, is to advance the state-of-the-art in computer science and also deliver cutting-edge technology to Microsoft itself. And so our team,\u00a0essentially,\u00a0is a \u201ccapability for hire\u201d within the division to help researchers transform their ideas into reality. And it\u2019s both, you know, very early and also late stage engineering engagement with the research teams. It spans tech transfers, internal research team engineering from the first napkin conversion of an algorithm into\u00a0a\u00a0living, breathing software or hardware. So we pretty much cover the spectrum. And the team that I have is fully multi-disciplinary, with engineers, program managers, designers, quality assurance folks and hardware engineers. And the challenge\u00a0today compared to, you know, two decades ago when MSR was first formed, when there was pretty much just the beige box underneath the desk,\u00a0that was the start-of-the-art computing at the time, the industry and the landscape has dramatically shifted and to create software and innovation\u00a0is dramatically broad. So when researchers want to innovate,\u00a0an army of one or two or three, sometimes just cannot achieve it\u00a0so it requires a deep bench of product disciplines and also working style, you know, diversity too,\u00a0and being able to create these manifestations.\u00a0So\u00a0my team,\u00a0essentially,\u00a0is a central capability for the Redmond lab itself to tap upon when the research teams don\u2019t have enough people to do something ambitious, or they need specific skills that they can\u2019t necessarily hire for\u2026<\/p>\n Host: I gotcha.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: \u2026so my team fills those gaps and executes.<\/p>\n Host: Well now that we know what Central Engineering does, let\u2019s zoom in and talk<\/b>,<\/b>\u00a0in more detail<\/b>,<\/b>\u00a0about the current engagement model.\u00a0<\/b>You\u2019ve sort of alluded to that just now.\u00a0<\/b>Maybe you could start by giving us a snapshot of the traditional engineering-to-product pipeline and then explain the Central Engineering model, and how it came about and how it\u2019s different by design.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: So historically, Microsoft Research, when it started twenty five years ago, there were researchers\u00a0and\u00a0what we call embedded research design engineers. And an RSDE, which is a\u00a0Research\u00a0Software\u00a0Design\u00a0Engineer, it\u2019s R plus SDE and at any moment in time those embedded RSDEs can be, you know, a hundred percent R, a hundred percent SDE,\u00a0and anything\u00a0in\u00a0between. And that slider changes over time. So that\u2019s traditionally how MSR was structured up until about twenty years ago. I actually started out as an embedded RSDE myself so I kind of got firsthand what being an engineer in MSR was like in that traditional model. So about twenty years ago, Dan Ling, the VP of MSR, he wanted to model a similar setup that MSR Asia had where they didn\u2019t have embedded RSDEs, but they had a centralized model, a pool of engineers, that their lab could draw upon. And what that kind of tried to address is the elastic need that research teams have in being able to efficiently assign engineering resources to teams that needed a specific capability for a small amount of time or specific skillsets they couldn\u2019t hire for. So Dan Ling and Jack Briggs came to me and said we\u2019d like to form something here, can you set something up? We\u2019ll give you two heads to start with and come up with an engagement model with the lab and see exactly what happens. So I did that. I got two slots for engineers and,\u00a0obviously,\u00a0I was the third slot as an active engineer at the time, too. And so I came up with this kind of RFP, request for proposal model, where researchers would submit kind of a single sheet of paper saying what they wanted to achieve and what they thought the scope was. And I would take those sheets and essentially do kind of a value proposition analysis of them and kind of a technology fit to see if I had engineers who could work on these things. And this is how the Central Engineering model started.<\/p>\n Host: Well let me ask you then<\/b>,<\/b>\u00a0<\/b>w<\/b>hat was your metric for choosing a project?<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: Yeah, so the proposals would come directly to me and then myself and the office of directors at the time, we would sit down and huddle and look over these proposals and I would\u00a0\u2013\u00a0obviously I pre-vetted them and had spoken to the researchers to determine, you know, exactly what was being requested here\u00a0\u2013 and so I would get a kind of a gut feel in terms of yes, this is ambitious, yes, this is achievable, no, this can\u2019t be done without ten engineers and a whole product team behind it. And I was\u00a0kind of\u00a0applying an instinctual gut model approach to these analysis of projects.<\/p>\n Host: Right.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke:\u00a0And as leadership changed,\u00a0they kind of respected my insights into these, but they wanted something more formalized, so I tried to reduce what was my instinct to an actual formula. So I try and equally balance the tech transfer value proposition. Is it going to advance the start-of-the-art for the researchers themselves? Do we have a good engineering fit with these kind of projects? Is it achievable? And then I kind of have my own chip, which would be the kind of the fun-factor metric. So I broke this equation into kind of five pieces with our new leadership and we started running the projects using this model. Now today,\u00a0that\u00a0has gone through essentially seventeen years of evolution. We have a whole new process now, which is based on the existing models and weightings and that kind of stuff and it\u2019s called Pitch Tank. So Pitch Tank, I came up with the cheesy name based off\u2026<\/p>\n Host: I love that name!<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: \u2026after the show Shark Tank.<\/p>\n Host: Right.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: You know, whereby inventors would come on the show to get VC funding. And so Pitch Tank was formed whereby we also were trying to address kind of transparency issues\u2026<\/p>\n Host: Right.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: \u2026because\u00a0researchers didn\u2019t really understand how decisions got made. And so we really opened it up in terms of,\u00a0the researchers would actually do the pitching of their proposals themselves rather than me present to the office of directors or leadership.<\/p>\n Host: Oh, okay. So very much like the show<\/b>!<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: Very much so. So they own the messaging. They own the pitch and the presentation. I also changed who the program committee was in terms of the evaluation and our leader Donald\u00a0Kossmann\u00a0currently wanted to completely democratize and open that up where leadership themselves wasn\u2019t involved at all in making these decisions.<\/p>\n Host: Interesting.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: It was owned by the people of the lab themselves. And so I equally split up the program committee into an equal weighting of four researchers and four engineering folks from my team so we could bring the engineering perspective to these decisions. The researchers could bring their research perspectives in terms of evaluating these projects. And so we\u2019ve run Pitch Tank for about three years now and we\u2019ve had about five\u00a0sessions\u00a0and it seems to be working really well.<\/p>\n Host: How many \u2013 how many do you choose? Per \u2013 per tank?<\/b><\/p>\n Respondent: Yeah, so \u2013 so the Pitch Tank that we just ran two weeks ago in January 2020, we had sixteen pitches on\u2026<\/p>\n Host: Wow.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: \u2026on the line, which was our most ever. It was actually a challenge.\u00a0We had to split across three days of three and a half hour sessions, which\u00a0is\u00a0quite the workload. And there was a lot of due diligence that we do ahead of time.<\/p>\n Host:\u00a0<\/b>M<\/b>m-h<\/b>m<\/b>m.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: So the researchers still have to write the proposals,\u00a0and then we also have a pre-pitch session with the researchers to help them hone what their pitches are\u2026<\/p>\n Host: Right.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: \u2026and\u00a0what their value proposition requests are going to be. So I have members of my team help them hone that. And then after the Pitch Tank, the committee get together and we have a scoring session where we enter these value weights into our scoring model and we create a color heat map, which actually shows,\u00a0basically,\u00a0the scores on a heat map\u00a0how we execute\u2026<\/p>\n Host: Sure.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: \u2026prioritize which projects we\u2019re going to invest in.<\/p>\n Host: I am seeing a reality TV show here\u2026<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: Yeah.<\/p>\n Host: Well, let\u2019s talk about you for a minute, Gavin, and what gets you up in the morning. You\u2019ve been at Microsoft Research for a long time, and at Microsoft for even longer, and\u00a0<\/b>you\u2019ve done a lot in your career here. In your current role though, you\u2019re both a partner-level leader and what I would call a roll-up-your-sleeves doer and that\u2019s by choice. So tell us how you keep all the plates spinning above your head and why?<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: Yeah, the plate-spinning thing is quite the challenge. So what gets me up in the morning is,\u00a0obviously,\u00a0meaningful work. Both myself and the engineers in our lab and obviously the researchers too, we find great meaning in the work that we do, and we\u2019re obviously privileged to work with several hundred PhDs with\u2026<\/p>\n Host: Right.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin Jancke: \u2026cutting-edge, breakthrough technology and ideas. So for me and folks on my team, you know, we get a vast diversity in job content and to be able to come to that every day and not only work on new projects, but new angles to the problems that we work on every day is just profound.\u00a0So\u00a0for me, as an engineer, obviously I lead a team and I provide engineering leadership within the lab to the researchers and beyond, but I also am an individual contributor engineer myself. I\u2019m a trained engineer by profession and I really strive to keep that alive, because I feel, if I\u2019m not an effective engineer and up-to-date and practiced and versed in the latest technologies and challenges and stuff like that, I don\u2019t feel like that I can be an effective engineering leader and be able to steer,\u00a0and help my team steer,\u00a0the research execution in creating real solvable engineering problems. I have a real issue with over-commitment because,\u00a0when I see these incredible research problems being presented, I have a problem not saying yes\u2026\u00a0but that over-commitment helps really focus on delivering and executing on innovation and that\u2019s also a role model for the rest of the team too\u2026<\/p>\n Host: Sure.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: \u2026because they see that I\u2019m kind of fearless in diving into the hardest firmware engineering problem or whatever it is. So I get the best of both worlds, both in terms of engineering leadership, managing an incredible team of talented people, but also staying a talented engineer myself.<\/p>\n Host: How do you keep your creds up? I\u2019m just looking at hours in a day and what you do here. I know, because I\u2019ve had people who work with you, talk about you and so\u2026 when do you do this?<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: It\u2019s a challenge. Obviously when I\u2019m at work I do the least amount of individual contributor engineering, but in my kind of role, one doesn\u2019t have a work week per say. When you find passion in a career, it spills over beyond a forty-hour week. So I do find precious time at the end of the day, when everyone\u2019s gone to bed, to basically innovate as an individual contributor engineer.<\/p>\n Host: Wow.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke:\u00a0I\u2019ve even resorted to try and avoid the commute by car, which is pretty horrendous from Seattle over to the east side of\u2026<\/p>\n Host: I can\u2019t even.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: So I actually have started to cycle to work, which has halved my commute time and I can basically find an extra half hour, forty five minutes, an hour each working day by cycling.<\/p>\n Host: Wait, wait, so you get here faster by riding your bike than by driving in a car?<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: Well, the commute really is bad and\u2026<\/p>\n Host: Yes, it is<\/b>!<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke:\u00a0\u2026and it\u2019s an e-bike so.<\/p>\n Host:\u00a0<\/b>Oh, t<\/b>here you go<\/b>. I\u2026<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: It\u2019s still a good workout.<\/p>\n Host: I thought you were going to say you rode the bus and then did more innovating on the bus, which would be a good little, you know, TV show as well.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: Well, so I would actually get more work done with the bus, but I don\u2019t find time to work\u00a0out,\u00a0so I kind of get a workout and save time commuting.<\/p>\n Host:\u00a0<\/b>So there you go. The productivity hacks going on all the time<\/b>\u2026!<\/b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n (music plays)<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n Host:\u00a0<\/b>Gavin, your Central Engineering team has worked on more than seven hundred projects over the twenty years that you\u2019ve been at this and over such a large range of topics that it would take less time to list what you haven\u2019t done than what you have. So before we talk about some of your more recent work, give us a brief overview of some of your past favorite projects<\/b>,<\/b>\u00a0maybe in the form of Central Engineering\u2019s greatest hits.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: Yeah, so it\u2019s really hard to pick a favorite child and so I\u2019ll do my best to pick a\u00a0\u2013\u00a0a good sampling there. So generally the ones that stick out in mind have been kind of the roller coaster rides where there\u2019s been intense pressure and also big unknowns. One is the Kinect for Windows. So this was back in the day when the X-Box released their skeletal tracker device for\u00a0its gaming console,\u00a0and so the hacker community managed to hack that for general use outside of the console before Microsoft had\u2026<\/p>\n Host: Oh, dear.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: \u2026a story there. And so VP of the Entertainment\u00a0and\u00a0Devices group and the president of\u00a0Research needed to come up with a solution so they basically said, well, Gavin, what can you come up with in terms of creating an SDK and run time for Windows which kind of fills that gap?<\/p>\n Host: Hmm.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: And so I picked a few people in my team with incredible skills in signal processing and basically we took the X-Box skeletal tracking code and essentially, we took those algorithms, filled in some big gaps and\u00a0so\u00a0we created a full run time, which included all of the audio stack too, and an SDK, set up program samples and that kind of stuff,\u00a0and the president of\u00a0Research at the time says, well, we need to release it by June! So essentially, we had fourteen weeks to deliver a company-grade offering for Kinect for Windows. So that really stuck out in my mind.\u00a0It was a fantastic run. There were lots of, you know, hot-collared moments there.\u00a0Some other ones that come to the top of the list,\u00a0so Skype translator\u2026<\/p>\n Host: Oh, yeah.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: \u2026was another great one. This involved working with the research team, the machine translation team and the Skype team in terms of how do we create an experience that links the machine translation backend with the Skype front.\u00a0And so my team provided the program management, the user interface engineering and all of their quality assurance testing aspects to that. That was another kind of thrill ride which involved I think five different continents of players and we worked very closely, the machine translation team and we shipped that. And it\u2019s interesting that the long tail of research takes many years for technology to appear in the mainstream. And I recall seeing in this Christmas 2019 Microsoft commercial, there was a young girl speaking to a reindeer and the speech translation aspect of Skype translator was essentially behind that commercial. So it\u2019s\u00a0incredible\u00a0to see how long it takes innovations and research to finally get into the forefront.<\/p>\n Host: And they have reindeer now in the language selection.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: That\u2019s right. And Klingon as well I believe.\u00a0Ummm. Some other ones that we\u2019ve done, so Project Premonition we worked with a researcher to create the world\u2019s most advanced mosquito trap, which was kind of a healthcare research endeavor.\u00a0And so we created a \u201chotel\u201d which had special doors of entry into the hotel rooms whereby we\u2019d do wing beat frequency analysis of specific mosquito types so that the mosquitoes could be trapped and, essentially,\u00a0their\u00a0DNA be ground up and tested for things like Zika virus and stuff like that. And so this was an incredible engineering effort for the hardware lab to engage upon.<\/p>\n Host: Yeah.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: And eventually, I think, several thousand of these devices were made and deployed. So that was another fun one that comes to mind. Another project, which was of my own creation, called Microsoft Tag and this came from this color barcode technology that I had. And this was another kind of over-commitment challenge pickle that I got myself into whereby myself and a marketer from the X-Box team wanted to change the marketing barcode industry for consumer-user interaction with magazines and billboards and that kind of stuff. So I had this color barcode technology, which worked really well with the cell phone camera technology at the time. And we\u2019re talking the late 2000s here, and essentially we made a pitch to the president and we got some brands such as\u00a0cereal manufacturers really excited and essentially,\u00a0again,\u00a0I committed myself, oh, I\u2019m going to create a product and we\u2019ll launch it at Consumer Electronics Show on five different mobile platforms with a cloud back end with marketing tools for publishers to use and leverage and monitor campaigns and so,\u00a0again,\u00a0with an incredible set of committed people who covered my behind with this, we executed and we delivered and actually a thirty-person product team got created around this and the product actually lasted for several years and I\u2019m going to make a bold claim here that it\u2019s probably one of the most pervasive pieces of technology that Microsoft might have ever deployed in that fifteen billion color barcodes were printed and in circulation.<\/p>\n Host: Wow.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: Eventually the product was sun-downed as business strategy changed\u2026<\/p>\n Host: Yeah, yeah.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: \u2026and it was licensed off to another company, but that was an incredible ride of my own technological creation with the color barcode and actually creating a workable platform.<\/p>\n Host: Well, it doesn\u2019t look like the pace of Central Engineering has slowed down at all<\/b>,<\/b>\u00a0or is slowing down<\/b>,<\/b>\u00a0so let\u2019s talk about what\u2019s happened just in the last year. And again, it would take too long to do the entire list of your year, Gavin, but in the immortal words of Janet Jackson, what have you done for me lately?<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: Yeah! So the team\u2019s been working on again some remarkable innovations with the researchers. So one of the projects that come to mind is Video AR. So essentially doing augmented reality, but using virtual reality displays. And this involved creating a new brand of camera device that the hardware engineering team created for us, which was very high-resolution in order to not give viewing sickness to people when they\u2019re looking in.<\/p>\n Host: Oh, right.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: Motion sickness.<\/p>\n Host: Motion sickness.\u00a0<\/b>Yeah.\u00a0<\/b>OK.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: That kind of thing. And so this was a full stack kind of endeavor both from electrical schematics all the way up to pipeline and software titles.<\/p>\n Host: Wow.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: And so that was an incredible multi-year project that we\u2019ve been working on. Another one is the third generation elevator whereby we\u2019re bringing ambient computing into the everyday work environment. We have an elevator control system where you can literally walk up to the elevator and it can determine your intent to actually press the button to go into it.<\/p>\n Host: No\u2026<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: And so we actually do\u2026<\/p>\n Host: Oh, wait. It, it can determine that I\u2019m going to push the button to go up or down, not which floor I\u2019m going to?<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: Well, we actually have two parts to this.<\/p>\n Host: Oh, geez.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: So our first deployment of this was to actually determine intent based on your walking pattern\u00a0before you got to the elevator. And the second phase, which we rolled out last year, essentially puts an in-car experience whereby,\u00a0using RFID and speech,\u00a0you can literally say, I\u2019d like to go to Floor 4 or, based on what\u2019s on your calendar, it knows that you\u2019re meeting on Floor 2, it will automatically press the Floor 2 button.<\/p>\n Host: Oh. My. Gosh.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: So that\u2019s also been a fun engagement is working with the elevator companies and so a very talented engineer on my team has been the architect for this, and engineer.<\/p>\n Host: I\u2019m just shaking my head.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: And then some other projects I personally over-committed myself to\u2026 so one was the firmware and software for the Project Emma Parkinson\u2019s watch.<\/p>\n Host: Oh, right.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: So the research team kind of went into different parts of the company, but we had a second-generation piece of hardware, um, and because I had familiarity working with this chip set, I did the firmware and then also decided to help write the clinician software so that patients can actually use pens so they can actually do analysis on tremor response to different vibrations in this new prototype watch and so we\u2019re now engaging with research institutions into furthering this work.<\/p>\n Host: Let me interject that Haiyan Zhang was on the show, and she does an entire sort of overview of Project Emma and how amazing that was for this young woman who was an artist, Emma, and she couldn\u2019t draw anymore because her hand shook. It\u2019s a fantastic story so\u00a0<\/b>I just want to<\/b>\u00a0say<\/b>,<\/b>\u00a0listeners can look that one up for more detail on that. It\u2019s interesting I didn\u2019t know how much involvement you had with it.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: Yeah, that was very meaningful work for me, because aside from the very fun technical challenge,\u00a0obviously it\u2019s serving an underserved community in terms of improving their lives.\u00a0And so tying into that, now\u00a0I\u2019m\u00a0kind of generating a\u00a0theme\u00a0to my kind of underlying passions. So I was working with the innovations team\u00a0about a year ago on detecting pollution using\u00a0inks that change color based on different gas levels in the atmosphere.<\/p>\n Host: Hmm.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: And I thought well perhaps there\u2019s also a parallel way of doing this digitally.\u00a0And so I came up with this hairbrained\u00a0idea of creating an air quality sensing device\u00a0which could be cellular connected, it doesn\u2019t require any infrastructure beyond the cellular signal, so we could do dense air quality measuring. And so this kind of hardware-firmware innovation kind of pulled in the other parts of the research team and so there\u2019s a significant effort around air quality measuring that we\u2019re now actually deploying to major US cities, which give new insights into kind of pollution and climate awareness.<\/p>\n Host: I love that.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: So this has been another incredible project.<\/p>\n Host: One of the hottest lines of machine learning research across the labs is teaching machines to make decisions under uncertainty. You\u2019ve said that operating under uncertain conditions is one of Central Engineering\u2019s greatest strengths<\/b>,<\/b>\u00a0and even a differentiator, so talk about how your ability to work with ambiguity plays out in your world?<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke:\u00a0So generally, we get engineering proposals from the researchers which are highly ambitious.\u00a0There\u2019s often quite a bit of naivety around the final-mile execution of these things whereby they have an algorithm that works great on a huge desktop machine under their desk,\u00a0but then they want it to run on a chip that runs on 3.3 volts with a battery life of ten months or so. So then we have to refactor the research prototype code into something that\u2019s actually deployable.<\/p>\n Host: Right.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke:\u00a0And so having done enough of these over the years,\u00a0and I guess almost two decades now, we\u2019re kind of able to identify how these things turn out, and which ones have the highest chance of success. And so based on this gut instinct, you know, this is how we determine what we\u2019re going to invest in and obviously there\u2019s an opportunity of,\u00a0this is really going to be a paradigm shift in terms of affecting a new underserved population, new technology that creates new experiences for humanity, that kind of stuff.<\/p>\n Host: Right.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: And so we kind of weight all those things and we\u2019re able to boil down, you know, where our investments are going to be and what technology is more likely to succeed.<\/p>\n Host: You\u2019ve alluded to a deep bench<\/b>\u00a0<\/b>in the conversation today, and I love sports analogies so, what that means to me is that\u00a0<\/b>your\u00a0<\/b>researchers can expect great things from your Central Engineering team. What kinds of people are you working with here in your<\/b>, what,<\/b>\u00a0now thirty-person team?<\/b>\u00a0<\/b>H<\/b>ow do you get them, scout them, draft them and bring them on the team?<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: So I\u2019ve\u00a0crafted\u00a0my team over seventeen years, so essentially I\u2019ve cherry-picked many people over almost two decades. And generally the people that have the highest chance of success are those that are deeply curious, they have an absolute love of learning, they know how to work in ambiguous situations, they aren\u2019t intimidated by what they don\u2019t know and so I\u2019ve also picked people with a very broad range of backgrounds.\u00a0They find true craftsmanship in their work and pride in what they do, and many of these people have been since the creation and founding of the team.\u00a0So not only these folks that I picked from the very beginning of the team\u2019s creation, but also I\u2019ve had some fantastic new recruits over the last few years and these folks are going to be the future of the team.\u00a0They themselves are younger.\u00a0They bring new perspectives in terms of how to engage with technology, how to engineer technology, so with the thirty people that I have, many of us having worked together for such a long period of time, you know, we don\u2019t have to learn how to work with each other. We have seventeen years of knowing how to execute in ambiguity. We have each other\u2019s backs, that kind of thing.\u00a0I\u2019m also very proud that my team is almost\u00a0fifty percent\u00a0women.<\/p>\n Host:\u00a0<\/b>That\u2019s awesome.<\/b>\u00a0So you talked about your High Capacity Color Barcode. And I happen to know that it actually made it all the way to the Museum of Modern Art for some reason. So I want you to talk just a little bit about how that ended up there and then what\u00a0<\/b>are your thoughts about the importance of beauty and art and design in technology because I know this is something a lot of your team members are interested in.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: So the barcode itself came from a project working with researchers that we were doing on trying to create a counterfeit-proof id and so we were trying to stuff a cryptographic hash of birthdate and all that stuff together with the person\u2019s image so that neither could be faked. And in order to achieve that density, the black and white barcode of the day just wasn\u2019t achievable. So we came up with the notion of using colors to store additional bits per symbol and essentially came up with this color barcode and somehow it ended up being picked up in some trade magazine that we were trying to achieve this, and the Museum of Modern Art was doing\u00a0a\u00a0initiative along the lines of design and the elastic mind, which is how momentous changes in technology reflect major adjustments in human behavior.<\/p>\n Host: Right.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: And so it got picked to go in the Museum of Modern Art. It was exhibited there for several months and that\u2019s how it ended up there.<\/p>\n Host: All right, and so, you know, just in terms of, I\u2019ve seen a picture of it and it is beautiful. How, then, do you think, and employ or deploy, concepts of beautiful design and art and beauty into the work that you do?<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: So actually I\u2019ve always had a love for user interfaces and when I first started Microsoft I started as a user interface engineer in the SQL group creating the first graphical user interfaces for the product, and so I was experimenting with kind of the first 3-D looking user interfaces for Windows that Microsoft had released, the buttons and things had kind of beveled looks and stuff like that. So I\u2019ve always had a kind of interest in design. I\u2019m by no means a designer. I\u2019m just a wannabe designer, but because of that, I\u2019ve kind of been attracted to projects as an IC, which have had that aspect to them.<\/p>\n Host: Sure.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: I was involved in the founding of Studio 99 which was basically a design and technology,\u00a0and a technology and design,\u00a0kind of initiative within MSR and so I also kind of pick projects that have a design element to them. I don\u2019t think it can be understated that user experience and user interaction is a very under-looked discipline and I had an incredible user experience manger working for me over the years who really honed my appreciation for that in kind of design-first engineering and innovation. And so that\u2019s continued over the years.<\/p>\n (music plays)<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n Host: We\u2019ve reached the part of the podcast where I ask all my guests<\/b>,<\/b>\u00a0what could possibly go wrong<\/b>?<\/b>\u00a0<\/b>A<\/b>nd as we\u2019ve discussed already, as an engineer, I suspect a good portion of your\u00a0<\/b>job is telling researchers what could possibly go wrong<\/b>!<\/b>\u00a0<\/b>B<\/b>ut you\u2019re in a research organization and so<\/b>,<\/b>\u00a0inherently you\u2019re inclined<\/b>,<\/b>\u00a0and maybe even mandated<\/b>,<\/b>\u00a0to take more risks<\/b>.<\/b>\u00a0<\/b>S<\/b>o aside from telling a starry-eyed researcher, it\u2019ll never work, what kinds of things do you see in the current milieu of high tech research that concern you and what keeps you up at night?<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: Yeah, so my role,\u00a0I guess,\u00a0is to play the bad cop, which is\u00a0to\u00a0often point out assumptions that researchers might have in taking a piece of technology to the next level.\u00a0I\u2019m not so much intimidated by the technical challenges.\u00a0My\u00a0biggest concerns are the speed,\u00a0from conception to delivery,\u00a0of an innovation and the competitive challenges that we as a company face. And so this both in terms of potential team size to tackle a specific innovation and also the breadth of disciplines and skills that are required\u00a0that\u00a0go into these things.<\/p>\n Host: So that\u2019s the funniest answer<\/b>,<\/b>\u00a0because it\u2019s basically<\/b>,<\/b>\u00a0how can I execute what we\u2019ve got to do<\/b>?<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: Right.<\/p>\n Host: That\u2019s the thing that keeps you up at night. In addition to your off<\/b>–<\/b>hours innovation, which literally keeps you up at night<\/b>!<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: Yeah, it does actually. Hard falling asleep.<\/p>\n Host: Well, we\u2019ve established that the Venn diagram of your personal life, your professional life and your leisure life could probably be represented by one circle, and that the three paths kind of form one story. Give us a short history of Gavin\u00a0<\/b>Jancke<\/b>. Where did it all begin? What thing led to another? How\u2019d you end up here?<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke:\u00a0So I guess my first experience with computing when I was age\u00a0twelve\u00a0and I requested a Sinclair Spectrum, which was a Z80 based, actually one of the first color personal computers. So I was lucky to get that for Christmas, and I started tinkering with typing basic programs\u00a0from\u00a0magazines and my first experiences\u00a0with technology then. From age\u00a0seven\u00a0until\u00a0seventeen, I always wanted to be a dentist. It wasn\u2019t until a cruel teacher said, Gavin, you\u2019ll never make the grades to be a dentist, that I actually reevaluated what I wanted to do, and in hindsight,\u00a0I think I made the right decision, which is I\u00a0will\u00a0continue the computing track and, a junior in high school, I was lucky to\u00a0strong-arm\u00a0my parents into outlaying one of the first IBM clones that were affordable with an EGA display,\u00a0and I decided to pick Turbo C as my mechanism for creating software on that thing. When I was\u00a0seventeen, I went on vacation with my parents and we were waiting to get on a cruise or something like that and we went into a bookshop,\u00a0and there\u2019s a saying which is,\u00a0don\u2019t judge a book by its cover. I actually judged a book by its cover and the book was\u00a0Programming Windows<\/i>\u00a0by Charles\u00a0Petzold\u00a0and this is how my intersection with Microsoft started. And I got the Microsoft compiler and I started developing Windows apps kind of before I got to\u00a0college. And in England we have the degrees\u00a0whereby you can take a sandwich degree whereby the third year in college is actually on an industrial placement. So I wrote to Microsoft in the UK saying, do you know of any companies that are using your Windows development kit because I\u2019d like to do my co-op here with them and they says, well, why don\u2019t you pop down and we\u2019ll chat to you. So I drove down to Microsoft UK and chatted to their developer support department and I left loaded up with SDKs and OS2 development SDKs in my arms\u00a0and basically worked for my third year industrial placement in Microsoft product support\u2026<\/p>\n Host: Interesting.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: \u2026in the UK. I also created an internal scheduling and phone book directory app for Windows and that kind of got me notoriety within the company and one of my mentors back at the time said, oh, you should apply for an internship in the development groups over in Redmond. So I was all starry-eyed at that and actually managed to secure that and this is when I was introduced to the SQL team and had an internship there. And essentially, upon my exit,\u00a0they offered me a full-time position. So I had my hardest year of my life, which was finishing my final year of university knowing that I would be working in the USA in the SQL Server team as an engineer. So that\u2019s how my start with Microsoft began and the rest is kind of history.<\/p>\n Host: Gavin, tell us something we might not know about you and how perhaps it\u2019s impacted your life and career?<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: Yeah, so from about age\u00a0ten\u00a0until\u00a0twenty one\u00a0years old I was a sprinter and my specialty, as it were, was the\u00a0two hundred\u00a0meters, so I had some amazing but hard Scottish running coaches where I was a member of the local running club. Essentially it was a year-long commitment whereby I\u2019d run in driving sideways rain in the north of England,\u00a0and over the years, you know, I went to competitions and stuff like that, and by age\u00a0seventeen, this culminated in me winning the bronze at the English National School Championships, and sadly,\u00a0twenty yards from the end, I pull a hamstring. Who knows how the ending might have happened?<\/p>\n Host: Oh my gosh.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: Um, but I became part of the English team. Unfortunately because of that injury I wasn\u2019t able to compete.<\/p>\n Host: Oh, man.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: Um, but by my Microsoft internships, I couldn\u2019t offer that kind of dedication to my running so I obviously rededicated it to Microsoft. But I think that decade of intense focus and dedication to that, gave me the focus skills and ability to manage stress, you know, on the starting pads on a national stadium?<\/p>\n Host: Yeah.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: So I really think that\u2019s helped me manage various aspects of my career.<\/p>\n Host: I\u2019ve got the music to Vangelis running through my head. You know, running on the beach in Scotland in the rain\u2026 Ding, ding, ding, ding,\u00a0<\/b>ch<\/b>,\u00a0<\/b>ch<\/b>,\u00a0<\/b>ch<\/b>,\u00a0<\/b>ch<\/b>\u2026. Well, we\u2019re getting to the end of the podcast and I am disappointed because I want to keep talking to you forever so maybe we\u2019ll go for a pint. Do you do pints here?<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: Oh, I drink a pint!<\/p>\n Host: At the end of every podcast, I ask my guests to leave us with some words of wisdom and you\u2019re talking mostly here to an audience of researchers, PhDs, postdocs, emerging researchers \u2013 and the people that love them. From your position<\/b>,<\/b>\u00a0at the intersection of what I would call blue-sky and rubber-meets-the-road, what are our listeners to be thinking about and working on if they want to follow in your footsteps and what kind of journey are they in for?<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: So I really feel that if you can find a career where you can combine your passions and your hobbies into it, that\u2019s where you\u2019re really going to have an incredible journey. I don\u2019t think one can confine oneself to a forty-hour week to find incredible success and richness in a career. So I really feel like,\u00a0for me,\u00a0risk taking has been an incredible part of what I\u2019ve gotten out of my career\u00a0where one shouldn\u2019t feel intimidated by one\u2019s own constraints and fears.\u00a0And if you can find a way of being able to overcome that I think you\u2019ll really find richness and meaning in your work. But also, I feel like engaging outside of one\u00a0specific job role is also another important aspect. For me, collaborating with others in hack-a-thons and stuff like that, surprising things have happened in my career whereby I\u2019ve learned a new aspect of engineering, which has set up subsequent years and joys of future work.<\/p>\n Host: Yeah. I\u2019m seeing the Venn diagram overlaps again. It\u2019s like if you can find what you love it, almost isn\u2019t work.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: Exactly.<\/p>\n Host: Gavin\u00a0<\/b>Jancke<\/b>, thank you for joining us today.<\/b><\/p>\n Gavin\u00a0Jancke: Thanks so much. It\u2019s been a pleasure.<\/p>\n (music plays)<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n To learn more about Gavin\u00a0<\/i><\/b>Jancke<\/i><\/b>\u00a0and how the Central Engineering team helps turn research into reality, visit Microsoft.com\/research<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you want an inside look at how a research idea goes from project to prototype to product, you should hang out with Gavin Jancke for a while. He\u2019s the General Manager of Engineering for MSR Redmond where he created \u2013 and runs \u2013 the Central Engineering Group. Over the past two decades, he\u2019s overseen more than seven hundred software and hardware engineering projects, from internal MSR innovations to Microsoft product group partnerships. On the podcast, Gavin takes us on a guided tour of the research engineering landscape and the engineering pipeline, recounting some of Central Engineering\u2019s greatest hits. He also explains how the lab determines which projects get engineering resources, and reveals how one of his own projects ended up in the Museum of Modern Art.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37583,"featured_media":642210,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"msr-url-field":"https:\/\/player.blubrry.com\/id\/57136515","msr-podcast-episode":"110","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[240054],"tags":[],"research-area":[13552,13560],"msr-region":[],"msr-event-type":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-promo-type":[],"msr-podcast-series":[],"class_list":["post-642195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-msr-podcast","msr-research-area-hardware-devices","msr-research-area-programming-languages-software-engineering","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_event_details":{"start":"","end":"","location":""},"podcast_url":"https:\/\/player.blubrry.com\/id\/57136515","podcast_episode":"110","msr_research_lab":[199565],"msr_impact_theme":[],"related-publications":[],"related-downloads":[],"related-videos":[],"related-academic-programs":[],"related-groups":[475626,724690],"related-projects":[439290],"related-events":[],"related-researchers":[],"msr_type":"Post","featured_image_thumbnail":"Related:<\/h3>\n
\n
\nTranscript<\/h3>\n
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