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Dr. Christopher R. WrenSpeaking | Honors | Experience | Education | Publications | Patents |
Brief |
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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 Google I've 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 patterns of large groups in buildings. I have also invented computer vision systems for human machine interface and developed dynamic simulations for graphics, haptics, and engineering. | |
Public Speaking |
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Honors and Endorsements |
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Experience |
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Senior Staff Software Engineer (since 2018) Google, Inc., Cambridge, MA, USA 2008 - present Now: Android. Previously: Google Plus, Google Buzz, Friend Connect Projects and Launches:
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Visiting Scientist |
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Principal Research Scientist |
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Senior Perceptual Engineer |
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Research Assistant |
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Engineer and Dynamicist |
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Research Technician |
Education |
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Doctor of Philosophy.
Master of Science. |
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Bachelor of Science |
Secondary Education. |
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Selected Publications |
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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
"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. |
Patents |
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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. |