Reading science fictions over the past one hundred years, one sees many seemingly impossible machines and services, which are now not only widely available, but have become accepted as natural. In this talk, I will share examples which show how technologies developed in research labs have impacted real life user experiences. For example, body gesture, speech, natural user intent understanding, and other new usage scenarios have all recently impacted how users utilize computing. Looking forward, I see exciting opportunities for research to further extend what is considered natural when using computers. What's natural in computing at the end of 21st century will be drastically different than what we find common today.

Dr. Hsiao-Wuen Hon is the Managing Director of Microsoft Research Asia, located in Beijing, China. Founded in 1998, Microsoft Research Asia has since become one of the best research centers in the world that MIT Technology Review called “the hottest computer science research lab in the world.” Dr. Hon oversees the lab’s research activities and collaborations with academia in Asia Pacific.

An IEEE fellow and a Distinguished Scientist of Microsoft, Dr. Hon is an internationally recognized expert in speech technology. He serves on the editorial board of the international journal of the Communication of the ACM. Dr. Hon has published more than 100 technical papers in international journals and at conferences. He co-authored a book, Spoken Language Processing, which is a graduate-level textbook and reference book in the area of speech technology in many universities all over the world. Dr. Hon holds three dozens of patents in several technical areas.

Dr. Hon has been with Microsoft since 1995. He joined Microsoft Research Asia in 2004 as a Deputy Managing Director, responsible for research in Internet search, speech & natural language, system, wireless and networking. In addition, he founded and managed search technology center (STC) from 2005 to 2007, the Microsoft internet Search product (Bing) development in Asia Pacific.

Prior to joining Microsoft Research Asia, Dr. Hon was the founding member and architect in Natural Interactive Services Division at Microsoft Corporation. Besides overseeing all architectural and technical aspects of the award winning Microsoft® Speech Server product (Frost & Sullivan's 2005 Enterprise Infrastructure Product of the Year Award, Speech Technology Magazine’s 2004 Most Innovative Solutions Awards and VSLive! 2004 Editors Choice Award.), Natural User Interface Platform and Microsoft Assistance Platform, he is also responsible for managing and delivering statistical learning technologies and advanced search. Dr. Hon joined Microsoft Research as a senior researcher at 1995 and has been a key contributor of Microsoft's SAPI and speech engine technologies. He previously worked at Apple Computer, where he led research and development for Apple's' Chinese Dictation Kit.

Dr. Hon received Ph.D in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University and B.S. in Electrical Engineering from National Taiwan University.