John C. Platt

John Platt is best known for his work in machine learning: the SMO algorithm for support vector machines and calibrating the output of models. He was an early adopter of convolutional neural networks in the 1990s. However, John has worked in many different fields: data systems, computational geometry, object recognition, media UIs, analog computation, handwriting recognition, and applied math. He has discovered two asteroids, and won a Technical Academy Award in 2006 for his work in computer graphics. John currently leads the Applied Science branch of Google Research, which works at the intersection between computer science and physical or biological science. His latest goal is to help to solve climate change. Previously, he was Deputy Director of the Microsoft Research Redmond lab, and was Director of Research at Synaptics.