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I am drawn to the junction between dynamic systems, people and
computers. I seek to understand how systems change over time. I
enjoy helping others to know these systems through data and
visualization. At the United States Digital Service I've used my
skills to improve systems that the most vulnerable depend on.
At Google I manifested this drive by launching
innovative features and interfaces that are used by billions of
people a day. At MERL I won awards for my work revealing the social
fabric of large buildings. I have also invented computer
vision systems for human machine interface and developed dynamic
simulations for graphics, haptics, and engineering.
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- U.S. Digital Service Exemplary Service coin for Medicaid crisis response
- Operation Allies Welcome coin for work at USDS on Afghan refugee resettlement.
- Kudos from Android leadership: "Chris filled an enormous, dangerous void by addressing a
very literal blind spot for Android. The project represents a
landmark achievement in Android's history and a turning point in
how we operate."
- Best Paper:
IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization,
October 2007
- Pfinder article in PAMI has been cited
more than 6,000 times
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Digital Services Expert
United States Digital Service, Remote
2021 - 2025
Projects and Interventions:
- Supporting State Medicaid Departments during the Public Health Emergency Unwinding
Diagnosed logic flaws and data-sharing disconnects in state Medicaid eligibility systems and processes,
saving millions of hours of staff and beneficiary time, and preventing wrongful disenrollments. Resolved
misunderstandings between policy and operations. Spot award, USDS exemplary service challenge coin.
- Facing a Financial Shock
Researched cross-benefit income verification options for Medicaid and SNAP.
Surveyed existing private sector solutions.
Developed system designs that informed the ongoing Income Verification as a Service project.
- Refugee Coordination Center
Improved interagency coordination with user research and data analysis. Diagnosed processing backlogs.
Delivered new scheduling tools to reduce delays, based on international field research.
- Operation Allies Refuge
Delivered a 30X reduction in refugee admissions processing time, enabling the evacuation of U.S. allies
from Afghanistan, based on data analysis, policy research, and staff interviews. Implemented on site
while building coordination channels between federal, Army, UN, and NGO staff.
- Operation Allies Welcome
Streamlined and automated the travel scheduling for 80,000 Afghan evacuees. Solved a complex constrained
optimization problem with competing inputs from policy, logistic, medical, family, military, and
volunteer stakeholders. Delivered simulations and visualizations to focus the team on human outcomes.
Claimed to be the first successful sharing of information across Dept. Homeland Security components.
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Senior Staff Software Engineer (since 2018)
Google, Inc., Cambridge, MA, USA
2008 - 2021
Projects and Launches:
-
Quantitative User Experience pipelines for Android
Created, resourced, built, and managed a team to design and deliver a novel user experience metrics
platform for the Android mobile operating system, leveraging privacy preserving technologies. Created a
data governance model for feature teams and served as liaison to the Privacy Working Group.
(code link)
- Android Notifications Technical Lead for Android
Recognized a need and advocated for the creation of this role. Used soft power to gather resources and
lead the transformation of notifications into a headline feature:
Wired magazine wrote:
"Our favorite thing? Notifications. They're simply the best.
They have become the centerpiece of the device experience."
-
Google Launcher Backup and Restore
- Ripples
- G+ APIs Architect
- Buzz APIs Lead
- Social Profile Personalization
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Visiting Scientist
Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
2017 - 2019
Human Dynmaics Group, Media Lab
Mentorship and technology transfer. Topics included data privacy and digital contracts for data governance
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Principal Research Scientist
Mitsubishi Electric
Research Laboratories, Cambridge, MA, USA
2001 - 2008
Led a loose team that developed novel sensor network
technologies for buildings: including sensing and network platforms,
perceptual systems, visualization interfaces, and ethical frameworks.
The work won academic awards and helped force a reinterpretation of
the company's core businesses. 11 patents, 22 papers.
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Senior Perceptual Engineer
Perceptive Network Technologies, Inc., Waltham, MA, USA
2000 - 2001
Founding member of a perceptual sciences company dedicated to
bringing context-aware communication technologies to the desktop, to
help users manage converging information technologies.
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Research Assistant
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Cambridge, MA, USA
Media Laboratory,
Vision and Modeling Group
1994 - 2000
I studied under Prof. Alex Pentland, one of the
most widely cited authors in the field of computer vision. We combined
rigorous intellectual acheivement with practical engineering to build
successful SIGGRAPH demonstrations and perceptual tool kits used
internationally by many research institutions. I learened to love the
balancing act at the junction of innovation, communication,
and impact.
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Engineer and Dynamicist
Boston Dynamics Inc.,
Cambridge, MA, USA
1993 - 1994
I worked for two years under Prof. Marc Raibert, inventor of many
running robots including Big Dog, and founder of Boston Dynamics, Inc.
Marc taught me much about tiger-team engineering and rapid
prototyping. We built physics-based simulations of robots, elevators,
frogs, and humans to drive analysis, animation, tele-immersion, and
force-feedback systems under tight deadlines for international clients
in academics, research, industry, and the military.
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Research Technician
Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Media Laboratory,
Advanced Human Interface Group
1989 - 1993
I worked four formative years under Dr. Richard A. Bolt, author
of The Human Interface and founding member of the MIT Media
Laboratory. I learned to love the human side of human-computer
interface, while building tools to support the research effort, such
as a scripted, networked, object-oriented graphics system that pre-dated
similar commercial systems such as SGI Inventor.
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Doctor of Philosophy.
Department of Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science
Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Thesis Title: "Understanding Expressive Action."
Minor: "Stochastics, Dynamics, and Recursive Filtering."
Master of Science.
Department of Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science
Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Thesis Title: "Pfinder: Real-Time Tracking of the Human Body"
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Bachelor of Science
Department of Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science
Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Thesis Title: "Dynamic Simulation of Large Systems: Trees Blowing in
the Wind."
Minor: Cognitive Psychology.
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Secondary Education.
Western Reserve Academy,
Hudson, OH, USA
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"Medicaid Process Improvements"
U. S. Digital Service Medicaid Renewals Team.
chapter in
"Tackling the Time Tax 2024 Edition"
Executive Office of the President,
Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
July 2024.
"Budget of the United States Government: Fiscal Year 2025"
Joseph R. Biden, et al.
Executive Office of the President,
Office of Management and Budget. March 2024
"U.S. Digital Service - Medicaid Renewals Playbook"
U.S. Digital Service Medicaid Renewals Team.
Executive Office of the President, United States Digital Service.
October 2023.
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"Google+ Ripples: A Native Visualization of Information Flow"
Fernanda Viegas, Martin Wattenberg, Jack Hebert, Geoffrey Borggaard,
Alison Cichowlas, Jonathan Feinberg, Jon Orwant, Chris Wren
Proceedings of the 22nd International World Wide Web Conference,
May 13-17, 2013.
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
(www2013.org,
Research@Google)
"Visualizing the History of Living Spaces"
Yuri A. Ivanov, Christopher R. Wren, Alexander Sorokin, Ishwinder Kaur.
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics,
ISSN: 1077-2626, Vol. 13, Issue 6,
pp. 1153-1160, Nov-Dec 2007
(
IEEE Xplore,
TR2007-068))
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"SocialMotion: Measuring the Hidden Social Life of a Building"
Christopher R. Wren, Yuri A. Ivanov, Ishwinder Kaur, Darren Leigh,
Jonathan Westhues.
Third International Symposium on Location- and
Context-Awareness. September 2007. Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany.
DOI
MERL TR2007-034
"Buzz: Measuring and Visualizing Conference Crowds"
Christopher R. Wren, Yuri A. Ivanov, Darren Leigh, Jonathan Westhues,
Mariela Buchin, Tai-Peng Tian, and Pavan Turaga. ACM SIGGRAPH 2007
Emerging Technologies, San Diego, CA, USA. August 2007.
(abs)
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"Functional Calibration for Pan-Tilt-Zoom Cameras in Hybrid Sensor
Networks".
Christopher R. Wren, U. Murat Erdem, Ali J. Azarbayejani.
ACM Multimedia Systems Journal, Special Issue on
Multimedia Surveillance Systems. Volume 12, number 3. December 2006.
DOI Link .
(updated version of
MERL TR2005-084)
"Similarity-based analysis for large networks of ultra-low
resolution sensors".
Christopher R. Wren, David Minnen, and Srinivas G. Rao.
Pattern Recognition, volume 39, issue 10, pp. 1918--1931.
Special Issue on Similarity-Based Pattern Recognition.
Elsevier. October 2006.
DOI Link .
(also
MERL TR2005-003)
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"Worse is Better for Ambient Sensing"
Carson J. Reynolds and Christopher R. Wren.
Pervasive 2006 Workshop on Privacy, Trust and Identity Issues for
Ambient Intelligence. May 7th, 2006. Dublin, Ireland.
(also
MERL TR2006-005)
"Perception for Human Motion Understanding," Christopher R. Wren. in
Machine Learning and Robot Perception Vol. 7 in the series:
"Studies in Computational Intelligence." Edited by Apolloni, Ghosh,
Alpaslan, Jain, and Patnaik. Published by Springer. 2005. pp. 265-324.
Springer Link
(also
Vismod TR 527)
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"Minimalism in Ubiquitous Interface Design", Christopher R. Wren
and Carson J. Reynolds. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, September
2004, 8(5), pp. 370-373.
Springer Link
(also
MERL TR2002-22)
"Volumetric Operations with Surface Margins." Christopher R. Wren,
Yuri A. Ivanov. IEEE Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Technical Sketches, Kauai, HI, USA. December 2001.
(also
MERL TR2001-047)
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"Wearable City of News." Flavia Sparacino, Steve Schwartz, Christopher
R. Wren, Richard W. DeVaul, Glorianna Davenport, Alex
P. Pentland. ACM SIGGRAPH 1999 Millennium Motel, Los Angeles,
CA, USA. August 1999.
"Pfinder: Real-Time Tracking of the Human Body." Christopher R. Wren,
Ali J. Azarbayejani, Trevor Darrell, and Alex P. Pentland. IEEE
Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, July 1997,
19(7), pp. 780-785. IEEE
Link
(also
MIT Thesis)
Full bibliography: PDF CV.
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United States Patent 10,938,767
"Outputting reengagement alerts by a computing device"
Wren, Tong, Chu, Reynolds, Barber, Mellor, Cinek
United States Patent 10,142,351
"Retrieving contact information based on image recognition, III"
Wren and Aharony
United States Patent 10,145,947
"Mapping positions of devices using audio II"
Borggaard, Koulomzin, and Wren
United States Patent 9,753,129
"Mapping positions of devices using audio I"
Borggaard, Koulomzin, and Wren
United States Patent 9,519,638
"Feed translation for a social network, III"
Wren and Aharony
United States Patent 9,454,665
"Retrieving contact information based on image recognition, II"
Wren and Aharony
United States Patent 9,449,302
"Generating personalized websites and newsletters"
Marantz, Shore, Terleski, Borggaard, Shalabi, Wren
United States Patent 9,148,742
"Proximity detection via audio"
Koulomzin and Wren
United States Patent 9,137,194
"Tools for micro-communities, II"
Wren and Aharony
United States Patent 8,818,049
"Retrieving contact information based on image recognition, I"
Wren and Aharony
United States Patent 8,694,593
"Tools for micro-communities, I"
Wren and Aharony
United States Patent 8,694,445
"Triggering attract mode for devices, II"
Sandler, Cohen, Wren, Spurlock
United States Patent 8,538,742
"Feed translation for a social network, II"
Wren and Aharony
United States Patent 8,533,266
"User presence detection and event discovery"
Koulomzin, Wren, and Sandler
United States Patent 8,510,381
"Sharing electronic resources with users of nearby devices"
Birand, Koulomzin, Wren
United States Patent 8,447,516
"Efficient proximity detection"
Koulomzin, Grabkovsky, and Wren
United States Patent 8,412,512
"Feed translation for a social network, I"
Wren and Aharony
United States Patent 8,401,981
"Triggering attract mode for devices, I"
Sandler, Cohen, Wren, and Spurlock
United States Patent 8,149,278
"Modeling Movement of Objects with Probabilistic Graphs."
Wren, Ivanov, Sorokin, and Banga.
United States Patent 7,907,781
"Determining Geometries of Scenes"
Ivanov, Thornton, and Wren.
United States Patent 7,667,730:
"Composite Surveillance Camera System".
Wren, Azarbayejani, and Dietz.
United States Patent 7,619,647:
"Context Aware Surveillance System Using a Hybrid Sensor Network"
Wren, Erdem, and Azarbayejani.
United States Patent 7,542,949:
"Efficient Hierarchical Decomposition of Temporal Patterns."
Wren and Minnen.
United States Patent 7,415,164:
"Spectral Similarity for Object Detection."
Wren and Porikli.
United States Patent 7,359,836:
"Scalable Activity Recognition for Sensor Networks".
Wren and Munguia Tapia.
United States Patent 7,302,369:
"Traffic and Geometry Modeling with Sensor Networks."
Wren.
United States Patent 7,242,421:
"Establishing a communications link by sensing perceptual presence."
Center, Wren, Basu, and Gusyatin.
United States Patent 6,911,995:
"Depth segmentation with virtual surface margins"
Ivanov, Pentland, and Wren.
United States Patent 6,680,745:
"Videoconferencing method with tracking of face and dynamic bandwidth allocation."
Center and Wren.
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