The geek in question: John Platt

Title: Research Area Manager @ Microsoft Research

What are you working on?
There are several related research groups that I work with:

• Knowledge Tools
• Machine Learning & Applied Statistics
• Interactive Visual Media Group (they helped to make PhotoSynth)
• Computer Graphics Group

Personally, I’m focused mostly on machine learning now. I've been working with some of the guys in Live Labs on information extraction research, where you say, "Here's a web page – what information can you take from it?" With information extraction, you turn unstructured data into structured data.

So, wait: how does information extraction relate to your 2006 Academy Award?
It’s a technical Academy Award — not like "Best Best Boy" or "Grippiest Key Grip.” Back when I was a grad student in the '80s, I researched how to make computer graphics movies that contained flexible objects. We had simulations of jello and cloth, and they were some of the first computer graphics images of simulated floppy objects. It turns out the papers I wrote spawned a whole set of algorithms over the years. And in modern computer graphics movies, you'll see a lot of clothing and flexible objects, derived from original work I did 22 years ago.

Did you get to go to the technical awards ceremony? It's separate, right?
Yes, it's the nerd Oscars! They televise one little snippet as part of the main awards. But it was black tie, and Rachel McAdams presented me with my award -- you don't get a statue, but rather a plaque or a certificate. (To compensate, my friend gave me my own special Oscar ... The Grouch.) Anyway, then you get to give a speech for 45 seconds. At dinner with a friend a couple nights before, I’d been joking about Kevin Bacon numbers. We figured out that Rachel McAdams has a Kevin Bacon number of 2. So, after I got my award, I stood up and joked, "I'd like to thank Rachel McAdams, because now my Kevin Bacon number is 3." I got quoted in Variety!

...Does this mean I now have a Kevin Bacon number of 4? Wait, more important question: what’s this about you naming asteroids? Oh, you've read my web page! As part of a class project with Gene Shoemaker, we got to take photographs using a telescope. These photographs were circular films, and then we looked at them under a stereoscope and we measured locations of potential new asteroids. We sent the locations off to Brian Marsden and he'd say "Congratulations! You've discovered an asteroid!" I discovered two.

Oscar Winner, Asteroid Discoverer -- what do you consider your crowning achievement?
Oh gosh. I try to do stuff that I can look back and be proud of. Getting the Academy Award was cool. Naming asteroids was cool. But I'm very proud of the fact that I was on the team that developed ClearType.

Ooh! That's one of those little tools that makes bazillions of people's lives easier!
...and that's exactly why I came to Microsoft. I'm very proud of the ClearType technology. It was a bunch of people working on the project: Bill Hill, Greg Hitchcock, Bert Keely, Geraldine Wade, Michael Duggan, Don Mitchell, Turner Whitted, Bodin Dresevic, Claude Betrisey, and Beat Stamm. We put the technology together and within a couple years it was shipping in XP, and hundreds of millions of people's reading experiences were improved.

You made hundreds of millions of eyeballs happier!
When I think "What is my positive impact on the world?”, I realize that Microsoft is this giant lever that you can do something that immediately affects a huge swath of the world. That really floats my boat. …Plus, I got to learn a lot from psychophysicists while working on Clear Type.

“Psychophysicists” sound like could be a dangerous science gang. When I talked to Christian and Jennifer at Microsoft Research in Boston, they were talking about all different researchers they work with -- mathematicians, cryptographers, sociologists, economists … but no mention of Psychophysicists.
I love working at MSR because it has all sorts of interesting diverse people. Psychologists, people who are into music, people who do signal processing, people who do artificial intelligence, and mathematicians. So many people are amazingly smart at this company! And I just love that. I love walking into a meeting and seeing people get excited and thinking really intensely about how to solve problems.

Plus, as a researcher, it’s really fun when you invent stuff. If you become a professor, you write a paper and you hope that someone picks up on it, or it might start something and maybe 10 years from now something interesting will happen. But here at Microsoft, we're connected to software that hundreds of millions of people use.

And the nominees for best John Platt-related links are...

• Knowledge Tools research group: research.microsoft.com/kt
• ClearType: microsoft.com/typography
• John’s webpage: research.microsoft.com/~jplatt
• John on Wikipedia: wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Platt