From Microsoft’s Clippy to the human genome – The San Diego Union-Tribune

A Silicon Valley specialist in machine learning with a long career at Microsoft has joined La Jolla-based Human Longevity as chief data scientist.

David Heckerman helped invent Clippy, the Microsoft Office Assistant character. After the now-defunct interface, invented in the mid-1990s, Heckerman experienced more success by inventing a machine-learning filter to fight the curse of spam.

The holder of a medical degree and a PhD in computer science, Heckerman has most recently been senior director of the Genomics Group at Microsoft. He has combined his computer and medical background to work on projects such as attacking HIV, using insights from attacking spam.

Heckerman spoke about the use of big data tools for the Festival of Genomics conference, held this week at the San Diego Convention Center. After his talk, Heckerman discussed his path from working on office software products to human genomics.

I guess one way to summarize the way I've been thinking about things over the last 25 years is when something annoys me, I want to try to fix it, he said. So Clippy is an example of that.

Not knowing the proper terminology for Microsoft Office was a stumbling block, Heckerman discovered when he tried to use the companys spreadsheet.

So I'm trying to use Excel and I'm going, how do I how do I make a graph? he said. I'm a mathematician so I think of things as graphs. And then I found out that graph was called chart in Excel. But it didnt know that graph was a synonym for chart. Then I realized there's a lot of problems like this in Excel and the rest of Office.

The solution was to create an expert system linking official names for products and functions to common-language terms. This would allow people to get responses to natural-languag queries.

This technology also was behind Microsoft Bob, another product that got a less than stellar reception from users, Heckerman said with a rueful laugh.

The basic technology was sound, he added. The problem was an overly aggressive presentation. This included annoying pop-up characters such as the talking paperclip that interfered with what people were trying to do. That wasnt his work, Heckerman said.

What I did was the guts behind Clippy ask a question, get an answer An example is if you want to print sideways, you had to know Excel uses the word landscape. You dont have to know that any more.

Another annoyance spam led Heckerman to develop a spam filter.

After my 10th spam mail in 1997, I said thats enough, Ive had it, he said. I built the first machine-learning filter for spam.

After more non-medical work, Heckerman migrated to health-related projects, where his heart was. Microsoft was open to that, he said. And after Human Longevity cofounder J. Craig Venter drove completion of the first human genome, his path was set.

I havent looked back since then, he said.

Human Longevity reached out to Heckerman, he said, and he joined the company about three months ago.

I had been working in genomics for about 10 years, and really respected HLI and the work Craig was doing, Heckerman said. Craig said, I recognize the power of machine learning, and thats what did it for me.

bradley.fikes@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1020

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From Microsoft's Clippy to the human genome - The San Diego Union-Tribune