Blaise Aguera y Arcas

In 2004 Blaise founded a software company originally named (rather opaquely) Sand Codex LLC, later Seadragon, Inc., to develop ideas in scalable architectures and user interfaces for interacting with large volumes of visual information, potentially over a narrow-bandwidth connection. He wrote software, raised angel and VC funding, hired the initial engineering and management team, and was the principal author of the company's IP portfolio.

Microsoft bought Seadragon at the beginning of 2006, in an acquisition driven by Live Labs founder Gary Flake. Since joining Microsoft, Blaise has become the architect for Photosynth and as well as Seadragon. These technologies should be reaching the Web as products in the next year.

Outside Microsoft, Blaise has applied computational techniques in a variety of fields, including neuroscience and history. In 2001 he received worldwide press coverage for his discovery, using computational methods, of the printing technology used by Johann Gutenberg, considered the inventor of printing from movable type in the West. This technology differs markedly from later printing technologies, suggesting a reassessment of Gutenberg's traditional historical role. Blaise's work on early printing was the subject of a BBC Open University documentary, entitled What Did Gutenberg Invent? (http://www.open2.net/renaissance2/doing/gutenberg.html).