Dr Chris Bishop

Assistant Director, Microsoft Research
Email: cmbishop@microsoft.com
Web: click here

Christopher M. Bishop obtained a B.A. in Physics from Oxford in 1980, and a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Edinburgh in 1983 with a thesis on quantum field theory. He then joined Culham Laboratory where he worked on the theory of magnetically confined plasmas as part of the European controlled fusion programme.

He subsequently developed an interest in pattern recognition, and subsequently became Head of the Applied Neurocomputing Centre at AEA Technology. In 1993 he was elected to a Chair in the Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at Aston University. He was principal organiser of the six month international research programme on Neural Networks and Machine Learning at the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge, which ran from July to December 1997.

After completion of the Newton Institute programme he joined the Microsoft Research Laboratory in Cambridge. He has also been elected to a Chair of Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh.

His research centres on probabilistic inference and graphical models. Current interests include latent variables, hierarchical generative models for data visualization, and variational methods for inference and learning in probabilistic networks.