I am a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research working on generative AI applications for code and data. I frequently collaborate with the Excel team, most recently on Copilot.
I developed the grounded conversational responses for Excel Copilot as well as working on program synthesis for formula generation.
I led the development of Excel Labs, a collaboration with the Excel team to release experimental functionality. Through Excel Labs, we developed the Python Editor which was subsequently integrated directly into the product.
During my research internship I helped design and build Calc.ts, the calc engine used by Excel for the web.
My PhD was at the University of Edinburgh working with Philip Wadler on contract semantics and gradual typing.
Email: jw ~at~ jackw ~dot~ io
Profiles: google scholar github linkedin microsoft research
Publications
Improving Steering and Verification in AI-Assisted Data Analysis with Interactive Task Decomposition (UIST 2024)Majeed Kazemitabaar, Jack Williams, Ian Drosos, Tovi Grossman, Austin Z. Henley, Carina Negreanu, Advait Sarkar ACM
Solving Data-centric Tasks using Large Language Models (NAACL Findings 2024)Shraddha Barke, Christian Poelitz, Carina Suzana Negreanu, Benjamin Zorn, José Cambronero, Andrew D Gordon, Vu Le, Elnaz Nouri, Nadia Polikarpova, Advait Sarkar, Brian Slininger, Neil Toronto, Jack Williams arXiv
ColDeco: An End User Spreadsheet Inspection Tool for AI-Generated Code (VL/HCC 2023)Kasra Ferdowsi, Jack Williams, Ian Drosos, Andrew D. Gordon, Carina Negreanu, Nadia Polikarpova, Advait Sarkar, and Ben Zorn MSR
FxD: a functional debugger for dysfunctional spreadsheets (VL/HCC 2023, Honorable Mention)Ian Drosos, Nicholas Wilson, Andrew D. Gordon, Sruti Srinivasa Ragavan, and Jack Williams MSR
"What It Wants Me To Say": Bridging the Abstraction Gap Between End-User Programmers and Code-Generating Large Language Models (CHI 2023, Honorable Mention)Michael Xieyang Liu, Advait Sarkar, Carina Negreanu, Ben Zorn, Jack Williams, Neil Toronto, and Andrew D. Gordon ACM
Where-Provenance for Bidirectional Editing in Spreadsheets (COLA 2022, VL/HCC special issue)Jack Williams and Andrew D. Gordon Elsevier
End-user encounters with lambda abstraction in spreadsheets: Apollo's bow or Achilles' heel? (VL/HCC 2022)Advait Sarkar, Sruti Srinivasa Ragavan, Jack Williams, and Andrew D. Gordon IEEE
LinkingPark: An automatic semantic table interpretation system (Journal of Web Semantics 2022)Shuang Chen, Alperen Karaoglu, Carina Negreanu, Tingting Ma, Jin-Ge Yao, Jack Williams, Feng Jiang, Andy Gordon, and Chin-Yew Lin Elsevier
Rows from Many Sources: Enriching row completions from Wikidata with a pre-trained Language Model (TheWebConf 2022)Carina Negreanu, Alperen Karaoglu, Jack Williams, Shuang Chen, Daniel Fabian, Andrew Gordon, and Chin-Yew Lin ACM
Where-Provenance for Bidirectional Editing in Spreadsheets (VL/HCC 2021)Jack Williams and Andrew D. Gordon IEEE
LinkingPark: An Integrated Approach for Semantic Table Interpretation (SemTab 2020)Shuang Chen, Alperen Karaoglu, Carina Negreanu, Tingting Ma, Jin-Ge Yao, Jack Williams, Andy Gordon, and Chin-Yew Lin PDF
Understanding and Inferring Units in Spreadsheets (VL/HCC 2020)Jack Williams, Carina Negreanu, Andrew D. Gordon, and Advait Sarkar IEEE
Higher-Order Spreadsheets with Spilled Arrays (ESOP 2020)Jack Williams, Nima Joharizadeh, Andrew D. Gordon, and Advait Sarkar Springer, Extended Version
Gridlets: Reusing Spreadsheet Grids (CHI EA 2020)Nima Joharizadeh, Advait Sarkar, Jack Williams, and Andy Gordon ACM, PDF
Spreadsheet Use and Programming Experience: an Exploratory Survey (CHI EA 2020)Advait Sarkar, Judith W. Borghouts, Anusha Iyer, Sneha Khullar, Christian Canton, Felienne Hermans, Andy Gordon, Jack Williams ACM, PDF
Design and Evaluation of Contracts for Gradual Typing (PhD Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2019) The Root Cause of Blame: Contracts for Intersection and Union Types (OOPSLA 2018)Jack Williams, J. Garrett Morris, and Philip Wadler ACM, PDF
Mixed Messages: Measuring Conformance and Non-Interference in TypeScript (ECOOP 2017)Jack Williams, J. Garrett Morris, Philip Wadler, and Jakub Zalewski LIPIcs, PDF