Michael Robin
Redmond,WA
Summary
Creative software professional with more than 35 years of experience who has taken on a number of engineering, research and leadership roles delivering intelligent software systems to stakeholders and customers, interacting with and impacting all areas of business.
Overview
40
40
years of professional experience
Work History
Principal Software Technical Lead (AI & Core Services)
Willow
, Australia
11.2020 - Current
- As an IC, designing and implementing Willow's agentic AI product (including both chat and indexing pipelines), using Azure OpenAI including a custom inhouse agent framework accessing multiple domain data sources (document RAG w/Azure AI search, SQL/Snowflake/ADX databases and ADT knowledge graph) using internal tools and MCP servers, providing real-time insights into dynamic customer data.
- Managing a team implementing the platform that hosts the Willow Digital Twins product line, including back-end core services using Azure infrastructure.
Principal Architect / Manager
Neal Analytics (to Microsoft)
Bellevue, United States
04.2018 - 02.2019
- Researched, recommended and prototyped real-time event processing and storage architectures for Microsoft to deliver to stakeholders on a project that combined Azure storage infrastructure and massive-scale data-ingest and transformation as part of video meta-data ETL and query pipeline. (C#, Python, Scala, Azure, Spark/Databricks, WinForms...)
Principal Software Engineer, Microsoft
Microsoft
Redmond, United States
03.2015 - 11.2017
- Enabled novel ways to empower teachers and students.
- Developed a class content management system integrated with Microsoft's core productivity offerings including Teams. Made improvements to Microsoft Learning Tools including the novel Immersive Reader, which uses text-to-speech and animation of text to help dyslexic and emerging readers successfully learn to read. (C#, Azure infrastructure components, Javascript/Typescript)
Senior Research Software Engineer
Natural Interaction Systems
Seattle, United States
01.2007 - 06.2014
- Designed, prototyped and shipped enabling technologies, tools and applications for tangible multi-modal interfaces, including support for electronic Pens, Speech Recognition, AI, interactive dialog, and message-passing distributed systems architectures.
- Projects include extensions to Microsoft (Excel, OneNote, PowerPoint) and ESRI products (ArcMap) to enable speech and gesture support, a speech-driven Android application for military observations, a mobile application for mobile field workers that communicates written ink over web-services to be processed on a sever, and integration code to connect to a variety of third-party military and commercial systems.
- Was a member of a cherry-picked 3rd-year team building the multimodal (speech, touch, and ink) font-end to the user-facing Commander's Associate module of the DARPA Deep Green project, transforming the user's intent into actionable planning artifacts.
- Designed and built a JS/JQuery/Bootstrap/etc SPA for visualization and editing of graph-structured enterprise documents.
- Participated in writing research papers and RFP's, lead small SWAT teams for quick-turn around customer-orientated projects.
- (a.k.a., Adapx Inc.)
- Patents Pending: US2008065576 / US2008065574 / ...
Software Engineering Lead
mPoria
Seattle, United States
07.2004 - 09.2006
- Designed and built end-to-end 3-tier system for sale of goods and services over mobile phones.
- Managing off-shore dev team.
- Server-side components include C# / ASP.Net, MS SQL Server & O/R Mapper, web methods, real-time payments.
- PC client includes: WinForms & ASP.Net.
- Mobile applications: Qualcomm BREW applet in C, and a specialized Java/MIDP canvas app. that rendered a domain-specific presentation XML markup language that included speech output.
Principal Engineer, R&D
Ascentry Corp.
01.2002 - 04.2004
- Research, design and write code to support an innovative, ad-hoc physical security and communications infrastructure for military and other first-responders based on wireless networks that facilitate data-staring between devices including Linda/T-Space-like data-sharing model with optional persistence layer.
- Developed architecture for flexible speech-recognition driven capability-based audio and data communications network, for human-human and human-computer interaction including dialog generation.
- Client apps. include integration with MapPoint on PC and GPS device on hand-held PDA.
Director Advanced Development
Conversational Computing Corp.
Redmond, United States
01.1996 - 07.2001
- First full-time technical employee of what became a 100 person early speech/AI startup.
- Instrumental in bringing many products from prototype to finished, boxed products, including two Best-in-Show award-winning products.
- Managed small team responsible for next-generation technologies and products.
- Generated requirements and contributed to the design of custom-written speaker-independent speech recognition and text-to-speech (both parametric and concatenative) components used in PC, server and embedded applications, including the EuroFighter cockpit, automotive hands-free applications, and an early Samsung phone watch with embedded voice-controlled WAP browser.
- Representative at standards bodies such as W3C and ETSI and presenter at conferences such as Avios, COMDEX, Java/One.
- Responsible for designing tools, applications and system-level software to support speech technologies in the area of PC command-and-control, telephony and embedded voice solutions, including natural language dialog creation tools.
- (a.k.a., Conversay / Conversa)
- Patents pending.
Software Design Engineer.
Microsoft
04.1990 - 06.1996
- Developed software (from device-drivers to tools and APIs) for first Multimedia computers (MMSDK) including early sound-card (SoundBlaster, etc.) & CDROM support and tools, which later became part of Windows.
- [Featured in New York Times magazine centerfold photo, Aug 25, 1991.]
- Key developer of Modular Windows, an early embedded set-top version of Windows 3.1 (precursor to WindowsCE/Mobile) for the home player market - shipped in Tandy VIS system.
- Developed early Interactive-TV systems software drivers, demos and applications, and gave presentations at industry events.
- Created music-over-IP prototype using interleaved I/O NT server and player natively supported by client OS stack.
- Granted patents: 6,266,043 / 5,808,604 / 5,687,331 / 5,673,40 / 5,510,811 ...
Software Engineer
Mitre Corporation
09.1988 - 09.1989
- Authored applications and tools for distributed/parallel processor architectures.
- Participated in research into the Future Generation Computer Architecture project, incl. wafer-scale massively parallel architectures and message-passing systems. (C, Lisp)
Software Engineer
Speech Recognition Systems
Rochester, New York
09.1985 - 09.1986
- Wrote tools to support a very early speaker-independent continuous-speech dictation system on Sun workstations and custom Motorola 68000-based multiprocessor machine (C, 68K Assembly)
Education
Bachelor of Science - BS - Computer Science
Rochester Institute of Technology
01.1989
Skills
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Team Leadership
- Python (Programming Language)
Websites
Publications
- Voice Enabling the Internet
- Considerations in Producing a Commercial Voice Browser
- Python Cookbook
- Voice Browsers - An introduction and glossary for the requirements draft
- Digital Paper Technologies for Topographical Applications
Patents
- Apparatus and method for controlling cursor movement
- Digital Paper-Enabled Products and Methods Relating to Same
- Method & Apparatus for Intelligent Allocation of Data Over Networks Utilizing User Biased Selection Criteria
- DIGITAL PAPER-ENABLED PRODUCTS AND METHODS RELATING TO SAME
- Method & apparatus for invoking embedded active elements by speech input
Timeline
Principal Software Technical Lead (AI & Core Services)
Willow
11.2020 - Current
Principal Architect / Manager
Neal Analytics (to Microsoft)
04.2018 - 02.2019
Principal Software Engineer, Microsoft
Microsoft
03.2015 - 11.2017
Senior Research Software Engineer
Natural Interaction Systems
01.2007 - 06.2014
Software Engineering Lead
mPoria
07.2004 - 09.2006
Principal Engineer, R&D
Ascentry Corp.
01.2002 - 04.2004
Director Advanced Development
Conversational Computing Corp.
01.1996 - 07.2001
Software Design Engineer.
Microsoft
04.1990 - 06.1996
Software Engineer
Mitre Corporation
09.1988 - 09.1989
Software Engineer
Speech Recognition Systems
09.1985 - 09.1986
Bachelor of Science - BS - Computer Science
Rochester Institute of Technology