Homecoming Lecture: Computers That We Can Wear

Exponential progress of computing and the
associated technologies as manifested by Moore's Law
have enabled extreme miniaturization, low power operation,
and multi-function integration. Many
programs at the University of Michigan in the past two
decades have directly contributed to this transformative
progress. These trends and new capabilities are
creating opportunities for building devices that interact
with the user and the environment in novel ways.
Examples of such devices include Google Glass, smart
watches, body monitors, and the forward looking
smart contact lenses.

A pioneering device has been Google Glass, which is
a communication and computing device in an unconventional
form factor. It enables entirely new ways of
interacting with computing systems and the environment.
Google Glass integrates a number of sophisticated
components including display, camera, multiple
sensors, and much more in a compact form factor, and
offers very rapid access to information. This brief presentation
provides the background and some of the
reasoning for why developing wearable computing
devices including Glass might have reached a tipping
point and how they might evolve in the future.
Babak Parviz is the creator of Google Glass and cofounder
of the Smart Contact Lens program at Google.
His work has been put on display at the London
Museum of Science and has received numerous
honors, including Popular Science's Grand Award: Best
of What is New (2013); CNN10 Invention (2013); Time
magazine's Best Invention of the Year (2008 and 2012),
and Your Health's Top 10 Medical Advance of the Year
(2008). He received the IEEE CAS Society Industrial
Pioneer Award for 2014.

Babak's areas of interest span high-tech with social impact,
novel communication and computing paradigms,
biotechnology, nano and micro technology, photonics,
and engineering at scale.

From 2000 to 2001 he was with Nanovation Technologies
as a designer and product manager for photonic
devices. From 2001 to 2003 he was a postdoctoral
fellow in chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard
University. He joined the University of Washington
Department of Electrical Engineering in 2003, and he
remains affiliated with the department. He was with
Google from 2010 to 2014 where he was a Google Distinguished
Engineer and a Director at Google [x].
Dr. Parviz is currently Vice President at Amazon, Inc.