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Halo 4’s former principal engineer is now helping with Amazon’s drone fleet

Apr 28, 2015, 2:30 PM UTC

Noted and long-time game programmer Corrinne Yu left her job in the game industry in January to take a lead role on Amazon’s drone delivery service, according to anupdate on her LinkedIn profile this week.

In November, 2013,Yu left her job asHalo 4’s principal engine programmer to join Naughty Dog, where she worked as a graphics programmer on unannounced PlayStation 4 games. According to her profile, Yu left her job at Naughty Dog in November, 2014.

At Amazon will be in charge of the “computer vision” for the Prime Air program, reporting directly to Amazon Vice President of Science Paul Viola.

Amazon’s Prime Air program is described by the company as a “future delivery system from Amazon designed to safely get packages into customers’ hands in 30 minutes or less using small unmanned aerial vehicles.

“Putting Prime Air into service will take some time, but we will deploy when we have the regulatory support needed to realize our vision.”

Yu’s career in game development stretches back to the King’s Quest series. Other notable work includes creating the game engine used inSpec Ops: Rangers Lead the Way, working as lead technology programmer at 3D realms and director of technology of Gearbox Software.

Yu is a member of a number of industry advisory boards including Microsoft Graphics board and SIGGRAPH. In 2010,Kotaku named Yu one of the most influential women in games of the past decade.

Yu has also spent time working on non-gaming efforts, including the Space Shuttle program at Rockwell International California, and award-winning accelerator experiments at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

We have reached out to Yu for comment about her new job and if she intends to return to the game industry, or is still doing it on the side, and will update the story when she responds.

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