Josh Ford

Josh Ford

Engineer

I’m Josh. I’m a software engineer who likes making things, taking things apart, and generally being curious about how stuff works. Over the years I’ve worked on all sorts of projects, from Apple products used by millions of people to weird little experiments of my own. I’m usually happiest when I’m learning something new or chasing an idea just to see where it goes.

Projects

Throughout my career, I’ve had the opportunity to work on products and research projects spanning machine learning, human-computer interaction, accessibility, spatial computing, and data visualization. At Apple, I focused on using machine learning and sensing technologies to create intuitive, highly contextual user experiences across Apple platforms. During my undergraduate studies, I explored novel approaches to HCI and visualization, building tools that made complex information more accessible and engaging.

Apple

2016 — 2026

Live Activities on macOS

June 2025

Live Activities bring timely, glanceable information from iPhone apps directly to the Mac. I worked on bringing this experience into the macOS menu bar, allowing users to see ongoing activities at a glance and seamlessly jump into iPhone Mirroring when they need to take action.

Priority Notifications

June 2024

Priority Notifications use on-device intelligence to surface the notifications that are most relevant to you, helping important information rise above the noise. I worked on the systems behind this experience, combining machine learning and personalization to determine which notifications deserve a user’s attention.

Keyboard Breakthrough

June 2024

One of the challenges of spatial computing is maintaining awareness of the physical world while immersed in a virtual environment. I worked on the system that allows visionOS to recognize a connected keyboard and reveal it through an Environment, letting users continue typing naturally without leaving their immersive experience.

Apple Vision Pro

June 2023

I was part of the original software engineering team building Apple Vision Pro and helped develop some of the core experiences that connect the digital and physical worlds. My work included Person Breakthrough, which keeps people in your surroundings visible while immersed, and EyeSight, which communicates your state of immersion to people around you.

AssistiveTouch

June 2021

AssistiveTouch for Apple Watch introduced a new way to interact with a wearable device without physically touching the display. Using signals from the watch’s sensors, the system recognizes subtle hand and wrist gestures and translates them into interactions, enabling people with a wide range of motor abilities to navigate and control the entire operating system.

Handwashing

June 2020

The Handwashing experience in watchOS 7 uses motion and audio signals to automatically recognize when someone begins washing their hands. The system then provides timely visual and haptic feedback, turning a simple health recommendation into an interactive experience that encourages users to wash for the recommended 20 seconds.

Siri Shortcuts

June 2018

In watchOS 5, we expanded the Siri Watch Face to incorporate third-party Siri Shortcuts. This required building an external-facing API as well as developing the intelligence needed to rank and surface content from third-party applications based on each user’s interests, behavior, and context.

Siri Watch Face

June 2017

The Siri Watch Face was an early example of a truly personalized interface on Apple Watch. Released with watchOS 4, it used machine learning and personalization to continuously adapt the information shown throughout the day, surfacing the apps, content, and actions most relevant to each individual user.

École Polytechnique

2025 — Present

AI Research Intern

August 2026

Researching novel approaches to 3D scene generation from a single photograph, with a focus on reconstructing immersive, interactive environments for virtual and augmented reality. Working at the VISTA laboratory at École Polytechnique on the intersection of computer vision, generative AI, and 3D graphics.

MS in Visual and Creative Artificial Intelligence

September 2025

Pursuing a Master’s degree at École Polytechnique focused on Visual and Creative Artificial Intelligence, exploring the use of modern machine learning techniques for computer vision, graphics, generative media, and visual computing. The program combines advanced AI research with creative and computational approaches to understanding and generating visual content.

University of Minnesota

2014 — 2016

GroupLens

June 2016

Undergraduate Research Fellow at GroupLens, exploring human-computer interaction, information visualization, and novel ways of making complex information understandable. Graduated in 2016 with a degree in Computer Engineering.

Atlasify

February 2015

Atlasify was one of the first major projects I worked on at GroupLens. The project explored a simple but powerful idea: what if relationships between concepts could be visualized spatially? Atlasify allows users to create heat maps of semantic relationships across familiar visual structures, from geographic maps of the world to unexpected spaces such as the periodic table.

VizByWiki

May 2016

VizByWiki explored how existing visualizations from Wikipedia could be automatically connected to current events and news coverage. The project used the visual knowledge already embedded in Wikipedia to enrich articles with relevant charts and visualizations, creating a more informative and engaging way to explore the context behind a story.

Epic

2015

June 2015

During my internship at Epic, I worked on an iPad application designed to help dermatologists capture and manage clinical documentation. The project gave me an early opportunity to build software for a highly specialized professional workflow, where usability and efficiency were critical to the experience.

Seagate

2014

June 2014

As an intern at Seagate, I worked on VLSI design and gained hands-on experience with the hardware and semiconductor technologies underlying modern storage systems. The experience provided an early foundation in low-level engineering and hardware-software systems.

Hobbies

When I’m not working, I tend to keep making things anyway. I like experimenting with new ideas, picking up unfamiliar tools, and occasionally turning a weekend project into something much bigger than I intended. Here are a few of the things I’ve been playing around with.

WebGPU Ray Tracer

A real-time path tracer that runs entirely in the browser on WebGPU. The interesting part isn't the ray tracing itself — it's the denoiser: a statistical error-reduction technique that cleans up Monte Carlo noise dramatically faster than just brute-forcing more samples, so noisy scenes resolve into something clean in a fraction of the time. Drag to orbit the camera, switch scenes, and toggle denoising on and off to see the difference for yourself.

Cloth Simulation

I also like making video games. Every once in a while, I’ll disappear into a Game Jam and see what I can put together in a very unreasonable amount of time.

The Spirit of the Architect

Photos

A collection of the obligatory travel photos I’ve accumulated over the years.

CV & Contact

LinkedIn Résumé CV