Stewart Tansley (@dswtan) is a Senior Research Program Manager at Microsoft Research Connections and acting product manager for the Kinect for Windows SDK from Microsoft Research. He is responsible for Microsoft’s academic research partnerships related to Natural User Interface (NUI), especially device-oriented, including Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), Robotics and Sensor Networks. Before joining Microsoft in 2001, he spent 13 years in the telecommunications industry in software research and development, focusing on technology transfer. Stewart has a PhD in Artificial Intelligence applied to Engineering from Loughborough University, UK. He has published a variety of papers on robotics for education, artificial intelligence, and network management as well as several patents, and co-authored a book on software engineering for artificial intelligence applications. In 2009, he co-edited The Fourth Paradigm, a book that collates visionary essays on the emerging field of data-intensive science. His recent research interests have centered on multi-device NUI, social human-robot interaction, robotics as a context for computer science education, sensor networks, and ubiquitous computing.

At Microsoft Research, Stewart works on project like:

• Kinect SDK – I am the acting Product Manager for the MSR release of the first official SDK, designed for researchers and enthusiasts
• Windows Phone 7 – I helped start Project Hawaii, an experimental program providing students with material for creating cloud-enabled mobile applications
• Surface 2 – empowers researchers to develop applications on Windows 7 touch-enabled devices, as well as the special Microsoft Surface devices
• Robotics in research contexts in academia, particularly (Social) Human-Robot Interaction, modular robotics, and software engineering for robots
• Robotics as a motivational context for teaching Computer Science
• Microsoft Robotics Studio and technologies in research applications
• Sensor Networks and network embedded systems technology and research applications
• .NET Micro Framework and other embedded systems platforms, including Windows Embedded