PeopleofSuperintelligence

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Mat Cook

Also known as Matthew Cook

Mat Cook is an engineer who produced the synthetic training data behind the body tracking in Microsoft's Kinect. A contractor with experience in computer games, he joined Microsoft Research Cambridge's Kinect effort in December 2008 and turned motion-capture data into depth images with known body poses. His paper with Jamie Shotton, Andrew Fitzgibbon and others won the CVPR 2011 Best Paper award and the Longuet-Higgins Prize at CVPR 2021, and in June 2011 he and four Cambridge colleagues received the Royal Academy of Engineering's MacRobert Award. He later co-founded Dogtooth Technologies, a Cambridge start-up building fruit-picking robots, where he was founder and CTO by 2019 and held the CSO title from 2022 into 2026.

Badges

Timeline

  1. December 2008

    Synthetic training data for Kinect

    He joins Microsoft Research Cambridge's Kinect body-tracking effort in December 2008 as a contractor with extensive experience in computer games. His job is to generate training data: he feeds motion-capture data into a computer-graphics tool that renders synthetic depth images with known body poses.

  2. 2011

    CVPR 2011 best paper

    He coauthors "Real-time Human Pose Recognition in Parts from Single Depth Images" with Jamie Shotton, Andrew Fitzgibbon, Toby Sharp, Mark Finocchio, Richard Moore, Alex Kipman and Andrew Blake. Its method labels every pixel of a depth image with a body part, and the paper wins the Best Paper award at CVPR 2011.

  3. June 2011

    The MacRobert Award

    In June 2011, he, Jamie Shotton, Andrew Fitzgibbon, Andrew Blake and Toby Sharp of Microsoft Research Cambridge receive the Royal Academy of Engineering's MacRobert Award for their contributions to Kinect.

  4. February 2013

    A Kinect talk at Wolfson

    In February 2013, he gives the talk "Kinect: You Are The Controller – The Inside Story!" for Microsoft Research at the Wolfson College Science Society in Cambridge. The talk explains how Microsoft Research Cambridge developed an essential part of Kinect's 3D human pose recognition.

  5. 2016–2020

    Co-founding Dogtooth Technologies

    He co-founds Dogtooth Technologies, a Cambridge start-up building intelligent robots for soft-fruit picking, with Duncan Robertson and Ed Herbert. Under the name Matthew Cook, he is a co-inventor of Dogtooth's US patent for a robotic fruit picking system, which has a 2016 priority date and is granted in 2020.

  6. By 2019

    Founder and CTO of Dogtooth

    By 2019, he is founder and CTO of Dogtooth and heads its technology team, drawing on a track record of managing the development of complex engineering systems.

  7. 2021

    The Longuet-Higgins Prize

    At CVPR 2021, he and his seven coauthors receive the Longuet-Higgins Prize for "Real-time human pose recognition in parts from single depth image".

  8. 2022–2026

    CSO of Dogtooth

    He becomes CSO of Dogtooth Technologies by 2022 and holds the title into 2026.

Career

  1. 2022–2026Dogtooth TechnologiesCo-founder, Founder and CTO
  2. From 2008Microsoft ResearchContractor

From the biography.

  1. Among employers with 30+ full-time cases, OpenAI leads primary technical role H-1B pay at $310,000, and Amazon, Google and Microsoft file 57% of all casesIncludes Microsoft. Across 440,669 certified US H-1B filings from 44 employers (FY2020–FY2026), OpenAI leads primary technical role base pay at $310,000 and xAI leads overall base pay at $290,000.
  2. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Includes Microsoft. Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI each year from 1955 to 2025, tracing the shift from university labs to companies.
  3. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Microsoft. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  4. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Microsoft. We estimate that Google holds the highest combined h-index at 8,016, while universities account for 73% of the deduplicated total across AI organizations.

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 Mat Cook yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Kinect Body Tracking Reaps Renown - Microsoft Research microsoft.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  2. IEEE CVPR 2011 Conference Colorado Springs | IEEE CVPR 2011 cvpr2011.thecvf.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  3. talks.cam : Kinect: You Are The Controller - The Inside Story! talks.cam.ac.uk. Checked 20 October 2026.
  4. The English Apple Man, informing consumers about how the apples they buy are grown, harvested and marketed theenglishappleman.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  5. US10779472B2 - Robotic fruit picking system - Google Patents patents.google.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  6. Team – Dogtooth Technologies (archived December 2019) web.archive.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  7. PAMITC AWARDS | CVPR 2021 cvpr2021.thecvf.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  8. Team – Dogtooth Technologies (archived May 2022) web.archive.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  9. Team – Dogtooth Technologies (archived March 2026) web.archive.org. Checked 20 October 2026.