Andy Wilson

About

I am a partner researcher at Microsoft Research. 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 augmented and virtual reality, ubiquitous computing and realtime interactive computer vision.

Before joining Microsoft, I obtained my BA at Cornell University, and PhD at the MIT Media Laboratory.

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.

News

November 2022: Our 2011 paper “OmniTouch: Wearable Multitouch Interaction Everywhere” 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” 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.

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“.

At BUILD 2015 we introduced the RoomAlive Toolkit, 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. Source code is on GitHub here.

Professional Activities
I’ve been active in the UIST, CHI, ACM Interactive Surfaces and Spaces (ISS), 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“.