By Rob Knies, Managing Editor, Microsoft Research
On Jan. 8, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) announced that it had recognized 41 of its members for their contributions to “the practical and theoretical aspects of computing and information technology.” Four of these new ACM fellows are from Microsoft Research: Susan Dumais, Albert Greenberg, Jim Larus, and Harry Shum. The latest ACM fellows were cited for making “significant advances that are having lasting effects on the lives of citizens throughout the world,” and the Microsoft Research contingent, in particular, was commended for “contributions ranging from information retrieval and human-computer interaction to programming languages, compilers and computer architecture to computer graphics.” The ACM will formally recognize its newest fellows in San Diego on June 9 during the organization’s annual awards banquet. Presenting Microsoft Research’s latest ACM fellows:
Susan Dumais
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Title: Principal researcher
Lab: Microsoft Research Redmond
Group: Adaptive Systems and Interaction Group
Joined Microsoft Research: July 1997
Reason for ACM citation: For research contributions to information retrieval and human-computer interaction.
Immediate reaction upon receiving the news: “I was actually away from the office when ACM sent out the (paper) acknowledgement, so I didn’t know about it for a while. I heard about the honor rather indirectly, from a colleague who had written a letter in support of my nomination. I was tremendously honored to be recognized by my colleagues for technical contributions.”
Key career accomplishments: “Much of my work has been at the intersection of information retrieval and human-computer interaction—trying to improve how people find and organize information. Two pieces of work characterize the interdisciplinary nature of my interests. The first is older work on Latent Semantic Indexing, which uses statistical analyses of large collections of text to overcome the mismatch between users’ and authors’ vocabularies. The other is more recent work on Stuff I’ve Seen, which takes advantage of the rich memories that people have about information that they have previously interacted with to make it easier for them to get back to that information. Some of the ideas from this project are evident in Windows Desktop Search, which is great.”
Albert Greenberg
Title: Principal researcher
Lab: Microsoft Research Redmond
Group: Networking Research Group
Joined Microsoft Research: January 2007
Reason for ACM citation: For contributions to Internet measurement and engineering.
Immediate reaction upon receiving the news: “I was thrilled to learn about the recognition, as well as grateful to my peers for the nomination.”
Key career accomplishments: “I view my top accomplishment as having invented, prototyped, and then implemented methods that are now fundamental to design and management of large-scale IP networks. On one hand, the work put IP network management on a sound scientific footing, and on the other hand, the work spun off robust tools and capabilities that improved operational network and systems automation and reliability. I am joining Microsoft from AT&T. The ideas and systems that I came up with and implemented with my colleagues at AT&T are now part of the fabric of AT&T’s global network; in particular, you cannot touch AT&T’s backbone without going through some of these systems. With Victor Bahl’s team, I am excited about the opportunities to have similar impact on efforts at Microsoft, such as the Live platform, IPTV, enterprise network and systems management products, and IPv6.”
Jim Larus
Title: Research Area Manager
Lab: Microsoft Research Redmond
Group: Software Improvement Group
Joined Microsoft Research: August 1998
Reason for ACM citation: For contributions to programming languages, compilers, and computer architecture.
Immediate reaction upon receiving the news: “I was extremely happy to receive this recognition. It was a great honor.”
Key career accomplishments: “My top accomplishments are my work with Tom Ball on optimal profiling and test, my work with Mark Hill and David Wood on the Wisconsin Wind Tunnel project, starting the Software Productivity Tools group at Microsoft Research, and the Singularity project that I’m running with Galen Hunt at Microsoft Research.”
Harry Shum
Title: Managing Director and Microsoft Distinguished Engineer
Lab: Microsoft Research Asia
Joined Microsoft Research: November 1996
Reason for ACM citation: For contributions to computer vision and computer graphics.
Immediate reaction upon receiving the news: “It is truly an honor, not only for me, but also for people with whom I have worked closely in the past years, in particular those from Carnegie Mellon University, Microsoft Research, and Microsoft Research Asia.”
Key career accomplishments: “I have worked on many interesting research problems in computer vision and computer graphics. My research accomplishments are mostly in the multi-disciplinary research fields, such as image-based modeling and rendering, and, most recently, in interactive computer vision. Hopefully, my best research is yet to come.”
Programming languages and software engineering 
Systems and networking