I was proud to learn this week that I've been elected as a Fellow of the US National Academy of Inventors. The NAI was founded to recognise and encourage inventors with US patents. When I was at Microsoft, I filed for more than 50 patents with my co-inventors. By far the best-known is the patent for co-inventing Infinite Scroll 20 years ago with my good friends Julie Farago and Nick Craswell. It really has changed how the world interacts with images, and none of us foresaw the impact that it'd have on mobile devices. I wouldn't have had the opportunity to come up with interesting ideas at Microsoft without the support of many creative Microsoft folks from that era including Julie Farago, Nick Craswell, Ken Moss, Jim Walsh, Ramez Naam, Christopher Payne, Harry Shum, Satya Nadella, Derrick Connell, Dane Glasgow, Susan Dumais, Richard Qian, Ari Lazier, Nick Whyte, Rohit Wad, Nitin Agrawal, Michael Cameron, Tabreez Govani, Krishna Gade, Stephen Robertson, Ranjan Sinha, Ph.D. and many other top folks. Thank you to all of you. I also wouldn't have had the opportunity to be made a Fellow without the support from RMIT University. Thank you in recent times to Karin Verspoor (FTSE FAIDH), Mark Sanderson, Lawrence Cavedon, and George Buchanan, and to Professor Martin Bean CBE and Peter Coloe for inviting me back to RMIT in 2017.
Outstanding Hugh! I'm so grateful to those who created pathways for us to explore our emerging interest in technology back in the early 80's (you know who they are). You're now repaying this of course through CS in Schools. Heartfelt congratulations mate!
Amazing and well deserved!!
This is great to hear Hugh! And 50 patents is quite the number. Having gone through the process of filing patents with USPTO over the past couple of years, getting each US patent granted is quite the journey.
Oh wow. That is an amazing achievement Hugh. Congratulations.
Wow, Hugh Williams ! Very well-deserved. I’m proud to call you a mentor, a colleague, and a friend.
Congratulations, Hugh! That’s a fabulous honor. Those were some amazing and fun times, with a lot of groundbreaking work by you and others on the team.
Congratulations 👏
ex Microsoft Corp Vice President, current board advisor
2dYou deserve this - it is a recognition of your contributions. I loved our work together - fighting in the trenches to make some new software. In my mind your core talent is curiosity - a desire to find new ways to solve a problem. The main question for us all is when you are hosting a party for all of us? And where?