Chris Burges

Also known as Chris J.C. Burges, Champness Jack

Chris Burges is a machine-learning researcher whose early work included communications routing, neural handwriting recognition, support vector machines, audio fingerprinting, and search ranking. Before joining AT&T Bell Labs in 1986, he earned a Double First in Physics at Oxford, a PhD in particle physics at Brandeis, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in MIT’s Theoretical Physics Department. At Microsoft Research, he worked on neural-net image compression and audio fingerprinting and collaborated on RankNet, an MSN Search ranker built with a neural network. He co-chaired NIPS in 2012 and 2013, received ICML’s 2015 Test of Time Award with his coauthors, helped shape Bing’s search ranking system, coauthored a 2016 paper on scaling AI, and retired from Microsoft Research at the end of 2016. As of October 2026, he serves on the NeurIPS Foundation Advisory Board and is predominantly a musician under the stage name Champness Jack.

Timeline

By 1986

Physics at Oxford, Brandeis and MIT

Before joining Bell Labs in 1986, he earns a Double First in Physics from Oxford and a PhD in particle physics from Brandeis. He works as a postdoctoral fellow in MIT’s Theoretical Physics Department.
1986

Machine learning at Bell Labs

He joins AT&T Bell Labs as a systems engineer in 1986 and works on large communications networks for error robustness and routing. He also works on neural networks for handwriting and machine-print recognition, support vector machines, and speaker verification.
2000–2005

RankNet at MSN Search

He joins Microsoft Research in 2000 and works on neural-net image compression, audio fingerprinting, and ranking. In June 2005, he collaborates with MSN Search on a new ranker called RankNet, a neural network for search results.
2012–2013

Leading NIPS committees

He serves as Program Co-chair of NIPS in 2012 and General Co-chair in 2013.
2015

A Test of Time Award

In 2015, he and his coauthors receive ICML’s Test of Time Award for their 2005 paper Learning to Rank Using Gradient Descent. Their RankNet work helps establish the basis for Bing’s search ranking system.
December 2016

A base camp for scaling AI

In December 2016, he coauthors A Base Camp for Scaling AI, which investigates Teacher Assisted Learning and Factored Dialog Learning in an automated personal assistant setting.
2016

Retiring from Microsoft Research

At the end of 2016, he retires from Microsoft Research as a Principal Researcher and Research Manager.
As of October 2026

NeurIPS Foundation Advisory Board

He serves on the NeurIPS Foundation Advisory Board in 2025 and 2026. As of October 2026, he is predominantly a musician under the stage name Champness Jack.