Academic positions
- Specialty Chief Editor – Haptics: Frontiers in Virtual Reality
- Editorial Board: IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications (CG&A)
- Conference Co-Chair: SPATIAL 2011, Chicago
- PC Member: CHI, CVPR, SPATIAL, ISMAR, Pacific Graphics, MMSys 2018, ISS 2017
- Reviewer: SIGGRAPH, SIGGRAPH Asia, Pacific Graphics, SPATIAL, CVPR, ICCV, PAMI, CHI (‘Excellent Reviewer’ – CHI 2017), UIST, ISS and more
- A visiting Professor. school of computer science, Interdisciplinary Center, Herzelia, Israel 2002.
Awards:
- Talpiot program member 1984
- Charles Clor Scholarship, 1992
- Star Developer, Microsoft Bing Maps 2006
- Best paper, UIST 2009
- Best Paper, CHI 2013
- Best Paper, CSCW 2016
- Honorable Mentioned Paper, CHI 2018
- Best Paper, ISMAR 2019
- Honorable Mentioned Demo, UIST 2019
- Honorable Mention Paper, IEEE VR 2020
- Honorable Mention Paper, CHI 2020
Invited talks
Enhancing mobile work and productivity with VR
In this webinar, Microsoft Researcher Eyal Ofek presents a summary of research investigating opportunities and challenges for realizing a mobile VR office environment. In particular, you’ll learn how VR can be mixed with standard off-the-shelf equipment (such as tablets, laptops, or desktops) to enable effective, efficient, and ergonomic mobile knowledge work.
Dec 2020
Behind the scenes with Microsoft: VR in the Wild
Virtual Reality (VR) & Augmented reality (AR) pose challenges and opportunities from both a technical and social perspective. We could now have digital, and not physical objects change our understanding of the world around us. It is a unique opportunity to change reality as we sense it. The Microsoft Researchers are looking for new possibilities to extend our abilities when we are not bound by our physical limitations, enabling superhuman abilities on one hand, and leveling the playfield for people with physical limitations. Dr. Ofek will describe efforts to design VR & AR applications that will adjust according to the user’s uncontrolled environment, enabling continuous use during work and leisure, over the large variance of environments. He will also review efforts to the extent of the rendering to new capabilities such as haptic rendering.
Using Virtual Reality To Help People With Disabilities
When we think of virtual reality, we often think of putting on a headset and immersing ourselves in the technology for the purposes of entertainment.
Recently, Microsoft has taken the idea in a different direction. The DreamWalker is a VR system that allows its users to navigate the real world on foot while simultaneously seeing themselves strolling around in a place of their choosing in the virtual world.
This new system can be used to alleviate not just boredom but level the playing field Microsoft senior researcher Eyal Ofek explained.
“It is not cookie cutter for all users, it needs to be different for every user depending on their environment,” Ofek said.
The project has been in development for roughly 15 years and Microsoft recently released a paper on their first field test.
Feb 26, 2020
Virtual Reality in the Wild.
Virtual Reality (VR) & Augmented reality (AR) pose challenges and opportunities from both a technical and social perspective. We could now have digital, and not physical objects change our understanding of the world around us. It is a unique opportunity to change reality as we sense it.
At Microsoft Research we look new possibilities to extend our abilities when we are not bound by our physical limitations; enabling super-human abilities on one hand, and leveling the play field for people with physical limitations.
Dr. Ofek will describe efforts to design VR & AR applications that will adjust according to the user’s uncontrolled environment, enabling continuous use during work and leisure, over a large variance of environments. He will also review efforts to the extent the rendering to new capabilities such as haptic rendering.
Gesture and Interaction Technologies
AWE Augmented World Expo
June 2013
IllumiRoom
A demo to the Israeli President and Peace Nobel Laureate, Mr. Shimon Peres.
Some coverage (in Hebrew):
Microsoft Herzelia, Israel
Dec 2013
Channel 10 news
Israel TV – Channel 10
Nov 28 2011
Read/Write world
Com.Geo, Washington DC
May 2011
Presented by Blaise Arcas y Arcas
New augmented-reality mapping technology demo from Microsoft. (I’m the rightmost person, on the other side of the phone to Blaise)
TED 2010
BingMaps Innovations
Bing Maps is moving beyond the old concept of mapping service as an atlas and 2D maps. We redefine the role of a mapping service, as an augmented reality platform that represents the world in a multitude of immersive media. We will explore new and research technologies at Bing maps. From maps and aerial images to oblique views, street imagery, indoor spaces, photosynths and videos; all smoothly connected in an immersive experience.
ThinkNext , Israel 2010
Location, Location, Location
Presentations and panel discussion led by Paul Worthington, Senior Analyst, Editor The Future Image Report
6Sight, Monterey, CA 2007