News

Aaron Hertzmann, assistant professor of computer science at the University of Toronto, and four others were chosen from a pool of more than 100 individuals representing universities in North America to join Microsoft Research's New Faculty Fellowship Program. Microsoft Research honours early-career professors who demonstrate the drive and creativity to develop original research while continually advancing the state of the art of computing.

The five winners — two women and three men — will each receive a $200,000 (U.S.) cash award over a two-year period to assist in his or her research. The recipients are also given the opportunity to collaborate with some of the top researchers working in their area of interest at Microsoft Research.

Projects that the Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellows will pursue include analyzing the basic concepts of perception, searching for connections in text, creating graphics that more accurately model human motion, designing a more elegant human-computer interaction, and finding a way to bring all these aspects together in a more refined framework for both the designer and the operator.

Aside from Prof. Hertzmann, the new Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellowship winners include Regina Barzilay, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Scott Klemmer, assistant professor of computer science, Stanford University; Eddie Kohler, assistant professor of computer science, University of California, Los Angeles; and Fei-Fei Li, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.