PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Erin Renshaw

Erin Renshaw is a researcher whose work spans image compression, audio fingerprinting, neural search ranking, language understanding, and dialog systems. At Microsoft Research, she worked as a senior research software-development engineer on the Sho programming tool in 2011. She coauthored RankNet, a neural-network method for learning to rank, and shared ICML’s 2015 Test of Time Award for the paper. Her papers also covered gait tracking with Kinect, machine comprehension, animacy detection, and dialog models of family relations.

Timeline

  1. March 2004

    The SLIm image compressor

    In March 2004, she coauthors a paper with Patrice Simard, Henrique S. Malvar, and James Rinker for the IEEE Data Compression Conference. The SLIm system separates text and line drawing from background images so both compress more effectively.

  2. March 2005

    Audio fingerprinting applications

    In March 2005, she coauthors a paper with Chris J.C. Burges, Dan Plastina, John Platt, and Henrique S. Malvar. It applies audio fingerprints to find duplicate clips and generate representative thumbnails for music tracks.

  3. August 2005

    Learning to rank with RankNet

    In August 2005, she coauthors “Learning to Rank using Gradient Descent” with Chris Burges, Tal Shaked, Ari Lazier, Matt Deeds, Nicole Hamilton, and Greg Hullender. The Microsoft Research report introduces RankNet, a neural network that models a ranking function, and tests it on data from a commercial internet search engine; the paper appears at ICML 2005.

  4. 2011

    Building the Sho tool

    In 2011, she is a senior research software-development engineer on the team building Sho, a programming tool for scientists and engineers. Sho bridges interactive prototyping environments with statically compiled code and supports access to development libraries and data.

  5. August 2012

    Gait analysis with Kinect

    In August 2012, she coauthors “Full Body Gait Analysis with Kinect” with Moshe Gabel, Assaf Schuster, and Ran Gilad-Bachrach for IEEE EMBC. The system measures stride and arm movement with a single inexpensive 3D sensor and is proposed for continuous gait tracking at home.

  6. 2013

    MCTest and animacy detection

    At EMNLP in 2013, she coauthors “MCTest: A Challenge Dataset for the Open-Domain Machine Comprehension of Text” with Matthew Richardson and Christopher J.C. Burges. A second EMNLP paper in 2013, “Animacy Detection with Voting Models,” brings Joshua Moore, Christopher J.C. Burges, and Scott Wen-tau Yih as coauthors; its system uses simple classifiers with heterogeneous data sources in a voting scheme to detect animacy.

  7. November 2014

    Relations World for dialog

    In November 2014, she coauthors “Relations World: A Possibilistic Graphical Model” with Christopher J.C. Burges and Andrzej Pastusiak. The work uses text-based dialog to build a model of a user’s family relations for a dialog system.

  8. 2015

    An ICML Test of Time Award

    In 2015, she and six coauthors receive ICML’s Test of Time Award for their 2005 paper, “Learning to Rank using Gradient Descent.”

  1. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI each year from 1955 to 2025, tracing the shift from university labs to companies.
  2. The United States employs an estimated 48% of people shaping AIWe estimate where the people shaping AI work today, how universities, companies and research institutes split across countries, and how country shares have changed since the 1960s.
  3. 43% of living people shaping AI work outside their country of birthWe estimate that 43% of living people shaping AI work outside their country of birth (520 of 1,198 people with known birth and employment countries).
  4. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionWe estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Erin Renshaw yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. A Foreground/Background Separation Algorithm for Image Compression - Microsoft Research microsoft.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  2. Using Audio Fingerprinting for Duplicate Detection and Thumbnail Generation - Microsoft Research microsoft.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  3. Learning to Rank using Gradient Descent - Microsoft Research microsoft.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  4. Learning to Rank Using Gradient Descent | ML Anthology mlanthology.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  5. Sho Brings Together 2 Computing Worlds - Microsoft Research microsoft.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  6. Full Body Gait Analysis with Kinect - Microsoft Research microsoft.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  7. MCTest: A Challenge Dataset for the Open-Domain Machine Comprehension of Text - ACL Anthology aclanthology.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  8. Animacy Detection with Voting Models - Microsoft Research microsoft.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  9. [1411.4618] Relations World: A Possibilistic Graphical Model arxiv.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  10. Schedule | ICML Lille icml.cc. Checked 22 October 2026.