Vice President of Microsoft Hardware Steven Bathiche will present, “Disruptive Evolution of Computers through New Interactive Technologies,” as part of the Bradley Distinguished Lecture series at Virginia Tech’s Blacksburg campus, Goodwin Hall Room 190, on Friday, April 19, at 4 p.m. The talk is open to the public.

Bathiche, a Virginia Tech electrical engineering alumnus (Class of 1997), is the founder and leader of Microsoft’s Applied Sciences Group, an interdisciplinary team of scientists and engineers in machine learning, computer vision, electronics, software, displays, optics and physics. The group is one of the preeminent innovation engines for Microsoft devices and experiences.

“It’s an honor to come back (to Virginia Tech) and share my work and experiences over the past 20 years helping to evolve computer form factors through the introduction of new interface technologies,” said Bathiche.

His career-long quest is to create novel human-machine interfaces, technologies, and computer products that blend naturally into people’s daily lives to enrich the way we work, play, and communicate.

Bathiche led innovations that seeded several technologies, including the formation of the current family of Microsoft Surface computers, where he currently leads the design of the displays and sensing technologies. He also invented one of the first consumer input devices, the Sidewinder Freestyle Pro, that used inertial sensors for gesture control. In 2002, Bathiche invented the Microsoft Surface Table, one of the first augmented-reality multiperson devices to use multitouch and object recognition, coining the term "surface computing."

Bathiche, who holds more than 100 patents, was one of the inventors of PixelSense technology, which embeds flat cameras into the display matrix, and of Surface Table 2.0, the world’s first computer-vision-based large flat-panel computer.

While earning his master’s in bioengineering from the University of Washington, Bathiche developed the Mothmobile, the infamous hybrid robot that used an insect as its control system via a neural electrical interface.

For more information, contact Laura Villada Esquivel.

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