Jonathan Larson

About

Jonathan Larson is a Principal Data Architect at Microsoft Research working on Special Projects.  His applied research work focuses on petabyte-scale data infrastructure, data science applications, network analytics, and information visualization.  He has applied experience in organizational science, neuroscience, cyber-security, counter-human trafficking, fraud analytics, mobile device analytics, media management, retail analytics, and real estate.

At Microsoft, Jonathan leads a research team of developers and data scientists focused on new approaches and applications for scalable network machine learning.  Through a pandemic initiative (Studies in Pandemic Preparedness – Microsoft Research (opens in new tab)), our network analytics can be applied to organizational science as detailed in this Harvard Business Review article (opens in new tab).  The teams efforts on organizational resilience have been documented in the following write-ups: Advancing organizational science using network machine learning to measure innovation in the workplace (opens in new tab), The Next Great Disruption Is Hybrid Work – Are We Ready? (opens in new tab), Uncovering Resilience: Measuring organizational networks during crisis (opens in new tab), and Toward Resilience: Adapting to crisis through the lens of the organizational networks (opens in new tab).  This network machine learning research has also led to shipping recommendation engines within Bing, deployment of tools to combat tech fraud, and algorithms / tools to better understand news provenance.  Many of the supporting machine learning libraries have been open sourced in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University and are available on as graspologic (opens in new tab) on GitHub.

Previously, he led a team that focused on the intersection of artificial intelligence and business intelligence for scalable interaction with data. This work extended Power BI from structured numerical analysis to enable text, meta-data, and other unstructured data use cases. It was designed for both novice and expert users at low cost. The team shipped a suite of new data interfaces through Power BI. The Power BI visuals, which have all been open sourced, include the Network Navigator, Time Brush, Table Sorter, Attribute Slicer, Cluster Map, Facet Key, and Strippets Browser. The team has also shipped two “solutions templates” for social brand management and news analytics.

Prior to joining Microsoft, Jonathan was Chief Scientist and Technical Fellow at Sotera Defense Solutions on assignment to DARPA, and led a variety of data science and big data efforts across several programs.  In recognition of this work, his team received the Department of Defense Joint Meritorius Unit Award.  DARPA programs Jonathan worked on have been featured on CBS’s 60 Minutes, Rolling Stone, SXSW, and TEDx.  Jonathan also served as Director of Research and Development at ATS, a natural language processing firm near Seattle.  At ATS, he oversaw development of a graph analysis engine product, was Principal Investigator for a Small Business Innovation Research grant, and led a joint research project with Washington State University.  Jonathan has also led large-scale data science efforts as a consultant for Google, Zillow, and the US Army.  He has started three separate corporations, worked a private funded incubator, and also served as a key contributor at Potomac Fusion, where his contributions helped lead to a successful acquisition by Sotera Defense Solutions.