Ade Famoti

About

Ade is a Senior Director and Lead Program Manager in Microsoft Research (MSR). He is a member of the Microsoft Research Accelerator leadership team, leading our research incubation efforts collaborating with researchers to identify the next big AI and advanced computing innovation at Microsoft. He’s also tasked leading a global team of Research Program Managers and Research Software Engineers, tasked with accelerating research into high-ambition outcomes across intersections of science, technology, business and societal outcomes for Artificial Intelligence (AI), Embodied Artificial Intelligence, Multi-Modal Foundation Models, and advanced computing technologies.

Before MSR, he spent time working on Autonomous Systems and Robotics incubations in the Office of the Microsoft CTO (OCTO), on Embodied AI Simulator Project AirSim with responsibility for leading an outbound simulation product team tasked with strategic partnerships, outbound product management, incubation Go-to-market strategy, and business model innovation. Project AirSim was used in the NASA SIO Extension (opens in new tab) trials with Bell Textron to model ground based Detect and Avoid (DAA) for autonomous flights.

He’s interested in Foundational Models, robot learning and developing higher level reasoning, with lower-level controls in embodied agents. He leads the Embodied AI working group in Microsoft Research- a group of interdisciplinary researchers working at the intersection of AI multi-modal foundation models and Robotics. He’s a professional member of the ACM (Advanced Computing Machinery), ACM- SIGR, technical member of the IEEE- Cognitive Robotics Committee (CoRO), ASTM F45-Committee on Legged Robotics & Autonomous Systems, ASTM F38- Commitee on Unmanned Aircraft Systems, the Neuro-Symbolic AI interest group at the Alan Turing institute, and the SAE-EUROCAE joint committee on Artificial Intelligence in Aerospace. He’s also an organizer at the CVPR (Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition)- Embodied Artificial Intelligence Workshop at the 2024 CVPR.

Prior to Microsoft Research, he was a senior leader with accountability for several multi-million dollar high-growth, cloud and enterprise sales at Microsoft and also worked in various senior industry leadership roles, helping to accelerate multi-million-dollar revenue growth and platform adoption. He graduated with a B.Sc in Computer Information Science degree from Morgan State University, a M.Sc in Technology Management from Columbia University, Deep Reinforcement Learning training from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and enrolled at Clare Hall, at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.