In this episode of ACM ByteCast, Rashmi Mohan hosts Henrique Malvar, a signal processing researcher at Microsoft Research (Emeritus). He spent more than 25 years at Microsoft as a distinguished engineer and chief scientist, leading the Redmond, Washington lab (managing more than 350 researchers). At Microsoft, he contributed to the development of audio coding and digital rights management for the Windows Media Audio, Windows Media Video, and to image compression technologies, such as HD Photo/JPEG XR formats and the RemoteFX bitmap compression, as well as to a variety of tools for signal analysis and synthesis. Henrique is also an Affiliate Professor at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Washington and a member of the National Academy of Engineers. He has published over 180 articles, has been issued over 120 patents, and has been the recipient for countless awards for his service.
Henrique explains his early love of electrical engineering, building circuits from an early age growing up in Brazil, and later fulfilling his dream of researching digital signal processing at MIT. He describes his work as Vice President for Research and Advanced Technology at PictureTel, one of the first commercial videoconferencing product companies (later acquired by Polycom) and stresses the importance of working with customers to solve a variety of technical challenges. Henrique also shares his journey at Microsoft, including working on videoconferencing, accessibility, and machine learning products. He also offers advice to aspiring researchers and emphasizes the importance of diversity to research and product teams.