RESUME

Phil Cherner

👋 I'm a graduate research assistant, software engineer, designer, tinkerer

Cambridge, MA · pcherner@mit.edu · GitHub · LinkedIn

Highly motivated engineer, researcher, presenter, and designer with extensive experience in fast-paced, interdisciplinary environments. Strong expertise in C#, JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, and Unity, with a proven track record of developing applications involving AI and spatial technologies. Passionate about creating innovative technologies and experiences that inspire and shape the future of human-computer interaction.

Experience

  1. Graduate Research Assistant at the MIT Media Lab /MIT AeroAstro, Human Systems Lab

    September 2022 - Present

    Full Time

    • Working under Prof. Dava Newman, Director of the MIT Media Lab, building immersive data visualizations to create a virtual Earth Mission Control (EMC) for visualizing and analyzing climate data.
    • Exploring new ways to display and interact with multi-modal data in a multi-user virtual environment.
    • Additionally leveraging generative AI for novel applications to add increased immersion, more natural interactions, and increased presence.

  2. Program Manager II at Microsoft, Responsible AI Team

    June 2020 - September 2022

    Full Time

    • Building state-of-the-art responsible AI tools with Microsoft and academic researchers, and integrating those tools into Azure Machine Learning so customers can benefit from these tools in simple, repeatable, and high-quality workflows. Aiming to provide the most complete and widely adopted responsible AI tools that enable users to build responsible and trustworthy AI solutions.

  3. Software Dev I/Software Dev II at Microsoft, Commercial Software Engineering Team

    September 2017 - June 2022

    Full Time

    • Work with Microsoft's top partners, ranging from start-ups to fortune 500 companies across many industries, developing alongside their lead engineers to solve the company's toughest technical problems.
    • Deploy production level code and contribute to open source communities
    • Developed a Responsible AI workshop to teach relevant tools and principles and how they can be used on projects.
    • Co-lead refactoring efforts on open source data labeling tool called the Visual Object Tagging Tool (VoTT) for machine learning which has been adopted by the community and teams within Microsoft. VoTT has over 3700 stars and 30k downloads on Github.

Education

  1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

    2022-2024

    Master of Engineering in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

    Concentration in Artificial Intelligence and Human-Computer Interaction

  2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology

    2013-2017

    S.B. Computer Science and Engineering,

    Minor in Philosophy

Skills

Languages

  • C#
  • Javascript
  • Typescript
  • Python
  • HTML5
  • Java

Frameworks

  • Unity
  • React
  • NodeJs
  • Unreal Engine

Tools

  • Figma
  • Azure
  • Git
  • TouchDesigner
  • Fusion 360

Publications

  1. Earth Mission Control: A Virtual Reality Platform for Bridging the Climate Science Communication Gap ↗

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology · 2024 · thesis

  2. EMC: A Virtual Reality Platform for Bridging the Climate Science Communication Gap ↗

    2023 · article-journal

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