Blaise Agüera y Arcas (born 1975) is a software engineer, software architect, and designer. He is an authority in computer vision, machine intelligence, and computational photography and presents regularly at conferences. He appears regularly at TED and his presentations have been rated some of TED's "most jaw-dropping." At

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

, he leads teams that build products and technologies that leverage machine intelligence, computer vision, and computational photography. He also founded th
Artists and Machine Intelligence
program at Google, which creates art by pairing machine intelligence engineers with artists. Prior to Google, he was a Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft and was the architect of Bing Maps and

Bing Mobile Bing for mobile (formerly ''Live Search Mobile'') is a search tool for handheld mobile devices from Microsoft as part of their Bing search engine. It is designed for mobile device displays. Bing Mobile is built into Windows Mobile and Windows Pho ...

.An Interview with Blaise Aguera y Arcas
April 29, 2010.

Education and early life

Agüera y Arcas was born in Providence, Rhode Island and grew up in

Mexico City Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital city, capital and primate city, largest city of Mexico, and the List of North American cities by population, most populous city in North Amer ...

to a

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

father and an American mother; they had met on an Israeli kibbutz. As a teenager, Agüera y Arcas interned with the U.S. Navy research center in Bethesda, Md., where he reprogrammed the guidance software for aircraft carriers to improve their stability at sea, which helped to reduce seasickness among sailors. Agüera y Arcas is a 1998 graduate of

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

where he received a

B.A. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

in physics.

Career

In 2001, he and Paul Needha
published
their findings that the metal mold method of printing attributed to Gutenberg was likely invented by someone else, likely two decades after Gutenberg printed his Bible. In 2004 for the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...

he devised a numerical method to create color composite images of almost two thousand negatives by

Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky Sergey Mikhaylovich Prokudin-Gorsky ( rus, Сергей Михайлович Прокудин-Горский, p=sʲɪrˈɡʲej mʲɪxəjɫəvʲɪtɕ prəkudʲin ˈɡorskʲɪj, a=ru-Prokudin-Gorskii.ogg; – September 27, 1944) was a Ru ...

Seadragon and Microsoft

Agüera y Arcas founded

Seadragon Software Seadragon Software was a team within the Microsoft Live Labs. Its product, Seadragon, is a web optimized visualization technology that allows graphics and photos to be smoothly browsed, regardless of their size. Seadragon is the technology powerin ...

in 2003. Seadragon created web optimized visualization technology that allows graphics and photos to be smoothly browsed, regardless of their size. Seadragon was acquired by Microsoft Live Labs in 2006. The technology was used to develop

Silverlight Microsoft Silverlight is a discontinued application framework designed for writing and running rich web applications, similar to Adobe Inc., Adobe's Run time environment, runtime, Adobe Flash. A plugin for Silverlight is still available for a v ...

Pivot Pivot may refer to: *Pivot, the point of rotation in a lever system *More generally, the center point of any rotational system *Pivot joint, a kind of joint between bones in the body *Pivot turn, a dance move Companies *Incitec Pivot, an Austra ...

Photosynth Photosynth is a discontinued app and service from Microsoft Live Labs and the University of Washington that analyzes digital photographs and generates a three-dimensional model of the photos and a point cloud of a photographed object. Pattern r ...

and the standalone cross-platform Seadragon application for iPhone and iPad. Slate called Photosynth "the best thing to happen to digital photography since the digital camera". He was the architect leading Bing Maps and

and was named a Distinguished Engineer in 2011. He collaborated with Ricoh to make the Theta, a 360º camera whose captured content displayed in Photosynth. While at Microsoft, Agüera y Arcas also suggested that technology should be designed for women. He cited a gap between the extent to which technology is designed for women and the market opportunity women represent, given trends in graduation rates and earnings.

Google

In 2013, Agüera y Arcas left

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

to become a leader of Google's machine intelligence efforts, along with programs in computer vision and computational photography. His departure from Microsoft for Google generated a press cycle, with articles appearing in publications that included th
New York TimesFast CompanyInternational Business Times
an
ValueWalk
Although his work is confidential, he is said to be working on projects that add deep learning to hardware devices, most likely smartphones. He also founded th
Artists and Machine Intelligence program
which fuses machine intelligence and art. The program's first public exhibit was on February 26, 2016 at the Gray Area, where Agüera y Arcas was the keynote speaker. On June 1, 2016, the program held the MAMI (Music, Art, and Machine Intelligence) show.

TED Talks

Awards, press and other honors

In 2008, he was named to the

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

Technology Review ''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and editorially independent of the university. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "The" in ...

TR35 The Innovators Under 35 is a peer-reviewed annual award and listicle published by ''MIT Technology Review'' magazine, naming the world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35. at ''Technology Review'' with lists of winners at technologyreview.com ...

as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35. Fast Company has twice named Blaise one of the "Most Creative People in Business"
20092015
, Agüera y Arcas is the inspiration for the character Elgin in the 2012 best-selling novel

' He spoke on KUOW about the future of machine intelligence in society.

References

External links

2004

2008
TR35 profile
2008
@blaiseaguera
Twitter account
Style is Violence blog

Virtual International Authority File entry
* *
"How PhotoSynth can connect the world's images" (TED2007)
*
"Augmented-reality maps" (TED2010)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Aguera y Arcas, Blaise American software engineers 1975 births Living people Princeton University alumni Google employees Google Fellows Microsoft employees People from Mexico City