Bill Thies is an American computer scientist and senior principal researcher at

Microsoft Research Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research subsidiary of Microsoft. It was created in 1991 by Richard Rashid, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold with the intent to advance state-of-the-art computing and solve difficult world problems through technologi ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

and the recipient of the 2016

MacArthur Fellowship The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the MacArthur Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to ...

Career

He started with Microsoft Research India in 2008 and is a senior principal researcher there. His research and analysis has appeared in many print publications including ''

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction ''ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering research on human–computer interaction. It was established in 1994 and is published by the Association for Computing Machinery. Editors-in-chief ...

, Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD) and others.'' As a

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

, his work at the Microsoft Research unit in

Bangalore, India Bangalore (), officially Bengaluru (), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan population of around , making it the third most populous city and fifth most ...

focuses on how to use technology to aid global development. He has helped to create the 99DOTS initiative, a model for delivering

tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...

medicine to those in India. He also helped to create and implement CGNet Swara in collaboration with Indian journalists, to enable isolated tribal communities to have a way to communicate needs with government officials.

Education

Thies graduated from the

State College Area High School State College Area High School, often referred to locally as "State High," is a public high school in State College, Pennsylvania, United States. It is the only public high school in the State College Area School District and is within walking d ...

in 1997 and moved to Massachusetts to continue his studies. He studied at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

, earning two Bachelors degrees (in Computer Science and Maths) in 2001, a Master's degree in 2002, and a Ph.D. in 2009. His Ph.D. was in computer science and engineering.

Recognition

In 2009, Thies received the John C. Reynolds Doctoral Dissertation Award. He has received the CHI Best Paper Award and, In 2016, he was included as one of the MacArthur Fellowship Grant recipients.

References

American computer scientists MacArthur Fellows Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni {{DEFAULTSORT:Thies, Bill