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Wednesday, March 1, 2006
Microsoft researcher does star turn
Hollywood has Stephen Spielberg and George Clooney, but Redmond has John Platt.
The senior researcher from Microsoft Corp. recently accepted an Academy Award for technical achievement. Platt, 42, won along with University of Toronto professor Demetri Terzopoulos for the techniques they developed in the 1980s to make computer-simulated cloth look and move like the real thing.
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After getting word of the honor in an Academy letter in his Microsoft mailbox, Platt accepted the award two weeks ago in Beverly Hills, Calif., at the technical and scientific ceremony that precedes this weekend's televised Oscar shindig.
The work for which Platt won his Academy Award actually took place before he came to Microsoft, when he was a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology. Platt and Terzopoulos developed an algorithm, based on real-world physics, that simulated cloth with an accuracy not previously seen.
The results of that algorithm, and modifications created by others, have become more evident as computer-generated graphics have become more common in movies.
"It's always wonderful when you do a piece of work and it withstands the test of time," Platt said Tuesday. "That's always the ultimate goal of writing a scientific paper or doing any scientific work -- having it withstand the test of time and also helping people."
Platt joined Microsoft in 1997 and is currently manager of Microsoft Research's Knowledge Tools Group. Projects in which Platt has taken part at the company include the ClearType technology, which improves the appearance of fonts on computer screens.
But he also seems to be a natural in the film world. At the outset of his acceptance speech, he made the audience laugh by thanking Rachel McAdams, the actress hosting the ceremony, for reducing his "Kevin Bacon number" to three, a reference to the tongue-in-cheek game in which people determine their degrees of separation from the actor.
The Los Angeles Times noted Platt's comment in its online Oscar coverage -- explaining that McAdams was in "My Name Is Tanino" with Beau Starr, who appeared in "Where the Truth Lies" with Bacon.
For the record, given Platt's place of employment, that would appear to bring Chairman Bill Gates' Kevin Bacon number down to four.
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