As you might have noticed, Microsoft just announced something that’s been a pain to keep secret for many years. We’ll sell an untethered, high performance mixed reality hmd with excellent environment+user sensing/interpretation. It’s called HoloLens. It’s actually good.
Here’s the project’s public site: http://www.microsoft.
Anyway, we’re looking for wonderful, ambitious research interns for this summer who are interested in mixed reality. Typically these will be PhD candidates, but there can be exceptions. The positions are paid, and the interns will work in a Microsoft Research location, most likely in Redmond, Washington.
There is so much to be explored!
What are some new user interface principles to be learned? We’ve learned a lot but have only begun to test the amazing variety of new designs that are now possible.
What are some wonderful applications? There are fun ones, of course. Augment food for kids? What about education? Predict and visualize potential standing waves in any environment the user walks into?
What are some interesting physical locations for apps? Clean rooms, to visualize the unclean? An archeological site? Combine with other sensors to show how WiFi signals propagate in a real location?
Can mixed reality be applied to cog sci research in new ways? To behavioral therapy? To diagnostics? To fitness?
What new experiments can be defined to study the so-called “memory palace effect” (mnemonic environmental mapping)?
What are the best ways to integrate physical objects with virtual visual content for haptic interactions? Build a new musical instrument?
Are there new building blocks that we haven’t thought of that would inspire developers?
And so on…
We will ONLY work with designs that could NOT be done in a traditional/classical HMD (such as an Oculus/EyePhone/etc.)
We’ll have to talk to candidates and get to know them. We’ll want to hear some ideas from them about research directions they want to pursue. We are open to projects that would include collaborations with others at their universities as well.
Candidates can either submit specific proposals, or can describe a general interest and apply on the basis of relevant past work.
We haven’t shown all we’ve done with HoloLens. Research notions from potential interns will have to demonstrate a likely ability to go beyond what’s been done internally- but there’s really no way to share what’s been done internally at this time. So… in a way interns will have to guess at what ideas will impress us, but that should make them more ambitious.
Candidates will need to have sufficient skills to program “holograms” on their own (in Windows, obviously); the exception we’d consider is a pair dedicated to collaborating, in which one member is able to both implement and realize publication-grade research contributions and the other has domain expertise or exceptional creative skills.
Interns will work directly with Jaron Lanier, Andy Wilson, and/or other interesting people at Microsoft.
This is a fantastic opportunity for students to get involved in a wonderful flowering of both research and commercial opportunity.
Warmly,
Jaron Lanier <jalani@microsoft.com>
Andy Wilson <awilson@microsoft.com>
Microsoft Research