John Platt
Encyclopedia
John Platt is a Principal Researcher
Researcher
A researcher is somebody who performs research, the search for knowledge or in general any systematic investigation to establish facts. Researchers can work in academic, industrial, government, or private institutions.-Examples of research institutions:...

 in the Machine Learning
Machine learning
Machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence, is a scientific discipline concerned with the design and development of algorithms that allow computers to evolve behaviors based on empirical data, such as from sensor data or databases...

 department at Microsoft Research
Microsoft Research
Microsoft Research is the research division of Microsoft created in 1991 for developing various computer science ideas and integrating them into Microsoft products. It currently employs Turing Award winners C.A.R. Hoare, Butler Lampson, and Charles P...

. Platt has worked for Microsoft since 1997. Prior to Microsoft, Platt had served as Director of Research at Synaptics
Synaptics
Synaptics develops human interface solutions for many major consumer electronics companies, such as Apple Inc., Asus, Acer, Dell, Gateway, HP, HTC, Lenovo, LG, Logitech, Nokia, Samsung, Sony, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and several others...

.

Platt was born in Elgin, Illinois
Elgin, Illinois
Elgin is a city in northern Illinois located roughly northwest of Chicago on the Fox River. Most of Elgin lies within Kane County, Illinois, with a portion in Cook County, Illinois...

 and matriculated at California State University, Long Beach
California State University, Long Beach
California State University, Long Beach is the second largest campus of the California State University system and the third largest university in the state of California by enrollment...

 at the age of 14. After graduating from CSULB at the age of 18, Platt enrolled in a computer science PhD program at California Institute of Technology
California Institute of Technology
The California Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Pasadena, California, United States. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphases on science and engineering...

.

While a student at Caltech under astronomer Gene Shoemaker, Platt discovered two asteroids, one of which he named after his father (3237 Victorplatt
3237 Victorplatt
3237 Victorplatt is a main belt asteroid with an orbital period of 1912.2626284 days . The asteroid was discovered on September 25, 1984.-References:...

).

In August 2005, Apple Computer
Apple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...

 had its application for a patent
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....

 on the interface of the popular iPod
IPod
iPod is a line of portable media players created and marketed by Apple Inc. The product line-up currently consists of the hard drive-based iPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, the compact iPod Nano, and the ultra-compact iPod Shuffle...

 music player rejected by the United States Patent and Trademark Office
United States Patent and Trademark Office
The United States Patent and Trademark Office is an agency in the United States Department of Commerce that issues patents to inventors and businesses for their inventions, and trademark registration for product and intellectual property identification.The USPTO is based in Alexandria, Virginia,...

. The reason appears to be that Platt had submitted a patent application for a similar interface design five months prior to Apple's claim.

Platt shared a 2005 Scientific and Technical Achievement Oscar from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a professional honorary organization dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of motion pictures...

 with Demetri Terzopoulos for their pioneering work in physically based computer-generated techniques used to simulate realistic cloth in motion pictures.

Platt invented Sequential minimal optimization
Sequential Minimal Optimization
Sequential minimal optimization is an algorithm for efficiently solving the optimization problem which arises during the training of support vector machines. It was invented by John Platt in 1998 at Microsoft Research. SMO is widely used for training support vector machines and is implemented by...

, a widely used method for training support vector machine
Support vector machine
A support vector machine is a concept in statistics and computer science for a set of related supervised learning methods that analyze data and recognize patterns, used for classification and regression analysis...

s.

Platt has an Erdős-Bacon number
Erdos-Bacon number
A person's Erdős–Bacon number is the sum of one's Erdős number—which measures the "collaborative distance" in authoring mathematical papers between that person and Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős—and one's Bacon number—which represents the number of links, through roles in...

of 6.

External links

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