Bernie Rihn

Bernie Rihn is a hardware engineer who dabbles in firmware and software. Before joining Microsoft, he interned at Apple Computer doing thermal design and at Better Place doing electric-vehicle-conversion program management.

While at Microsoft, Rihn interned with Surface (the big multi-touch table), and he resumed full-time as the lead EE for Surface (the multi-touch table with sensor-in-pixel technology). Later, he provided EE/ME design support for two projects related to Surface (the tablet).

While working on product teams for the various Surfaces, Rihn also provided EE and ME prototyping support for the Applied Sciences Group. Rihn built the backlight driver electronics for four proof-of-concept Surface units with folded “wedge” optics and for the first 3D, auto-stereoscopic display shown by Steven Bathiche at SID in 2010.

Rihn has focused much of his research energy into new display and camera technologies with the hope that he might help enrich our current device interaction models. He especially looks for ideas that reduce round-trip interface latency, reduce interface parallax, or increase interface transparency, flexibility, and expressiveness.

Rihn studied electrical engineering at Stanford University where he concentrated in analog design and systems design.

In his free time, Rihn enjoys mountain biking, skiing, and bitcoin speculation.

• Presentation: Backlight for View-Sequential Autostereo 3D

  Microsoft Applied Sciences June, 2010

  By Adrian Travis, Neil Emerton, Tim Large, Steven Bathiche, Bernie Rihn