Steve Hollasch Email & Phone Number

Seattle, Wa, Us

I work in the geospatial team at Tableau, developing analytical and visualization features related to data across the Earth.

At Ubix Labs, I worked with a small startup team on automated data analytics. Our goal: design a machine-learning system that generalized data science workflows across multiple domains. In my role as the head of visualization, I created a system that supported a variety of source data structures and rendered them in one of over 35 different visualization types. Each of these visualizations supported a large number of variations and styles. These plots also supported a general interaction protocol that provided a way for our automated analytics to offer a set of likely next actions, queries and pivots. The visualization system was primarily HTML, SVG and D3. The front-end data subsystem built on socket.io and Flux.

Seattle, Wa, Us

I worked on the real-time visualization dashboard (using LESS, React, Backbone and D3) for Qumulo hardware performance. Prior to that work, I helped design a back-end REST service using MongoDB to capture and evaluate information from Qumulo hardware units in the field.

Redmond, Washington, Us

I worked for two years in Office Labs on the Captivate project as the primary developer of the 2D, 3D, typography and animation system. We developed Captivate to model documents as an information store, to deduce the relationships between elements in the information, and to present these in a fluid, dynamic, and automated manner using highly-designed 2D and 3D graphics and high-quality typographic and image layout. This project was transitioned out of the labs group and ultimately into a new Microsoft Office product now known as Sway.

Redmond, Washington, Us

I worked on multi-resolution imagery using HTML5, JavaScript, SVG and Canvas. My code was deployed in the labs main product, Pivot Viewer, and in the Seajax general-purpose library, and in the Zoom.it web site for web viewing of high-resolution imagery.

Redmond, Washington, Us

On contract, I was responsible for writing two white papers for two internal projects at Microsoft Research.

Concurrent with my work at Office Labs, I also taught AP Computer Science at Mt Si High School for a year, through the TEALS (Technology Education and Literacy in Schools) program, sponsored by Microsoft. This was a part-time effort where I taught first period, and then went to work after class. Our class ended up achieving the second-highest score in Washington State on the national College Board AP Computer Science exam.

I developed new code and debugged existing code for the release of Forza 3 on the Xbox 360. This work included wheel blur, cockpit lighting, car livery management, damage texturing and ghost car rendering. I also worked on diagnosing and fixing serveral multi-processor race conditions peculiar to the Xbox 360 processing architecture. I also improved robustness of the crash dump handler for game testing in out-of-memory conditions.

Redmond, Washington, Us

I created an XML format to persist image stitching configuration for Microsoft Research's new image stitching engine, to align and compose high resolution image sets. I was also responsible for characterizing performance of the core image stitching code to identify bottlenecks and opportunities for optimization.

Redmond, Washington, Us

I worked on NFL Fever 2004 for the Xbox, and created the XML-based scene scripting language that artists used to easily direct non-player characters for various cut scenes, reaction shots, and ambient character behavior. For the next version of NFL Fever, I owned the full redesign of game presentation, including audio, camera management, and narrative and emotional presentation within the game.

Redmond, Washington, Us

I worked on Microsoft's Talisman project, an advanced rendering hardware architecture. Following that, I was responsible for the 3D graphics portion of the DirectAnimation library, based on GL, then Direct3D. This included viewing (including proper stereo), lighting, attribute management, picking, all geometry (including parametric surfaces and animate trimeshes), and mathematical support code. I also developed (and later patented) a camera model with automated Z-buffer management and optimization.After DirectAnimation, I moved to the XSG (also known as Fahrenheit Scene Graph) project, a joint collaboration with Silicon Graphics. XSG was a high-level, extensible scene graph library. I redesigned the probe action, and in doing so developed a novel approach for ray-trimesh intersection that sped up hit testing by a factor of sixteen. Microsoft patented this algorithm, which is included in the D3DX utility library.

I ported the Doré scene graph library to their Vistra workstation, the DECstation 5000, and the DEC Alpha workstation. I implemented the Doré PEX graphics driver. I added graphics primitives to and rewrote the lighting portion of the Doré GL driver. I wrote KPEXlib, Kubota's extensions to PEX, including the entire set of graphics primitives, stereo display, and anti-aliasing.

Ms, Computer Science

Bs, Computer Science