Microsoft Research

Microsoft Research

Website	research.microsoft.com

Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research division of Microsoft created in 1991 for developing various computer science ideas and integrating them into Microsoft products. It currently employs Turing Award winners C.A.R. Hoare, Butler Lampson, and Charles P. Thacker, Fields Medal winner Michael Freedman, MacArthur Fellow Jim Blinn, Dijkstra Prize winner Leslie Lamport and many other highly recognized experts in computer science, physics, and mathematics, including Turing Award winner Jim Gray up until his highly publicized disappearance while sailing.

Research areas

Microsoft research is categorized into the following broad areas:^[1]

1. Algorithms and theory
2. Hardware development
3. Human–computer interaction
4. Machine learning, adaptation, and intelligence
5. Multimedia and graphics
6. Search, retrieval, and knowledge management
7. Security and cryptography
8. Social computing
9. Software development
10. Systems, architectures, mobility, and networking
11. Computational and Systems Biology ^[2][3]

One of the stated goals of Microsoft Research is to "support long-term computer science research that is not bound by product cycles."^[4] MSR sponsors the Microsoft Research Fellowship for graduate students and the New Faculty Fellowship for new faculty members.

Laboratories

There are laboratories around the world in Aachen, Bangalore, Beijing, Cambridge (United Kingdom), Cairo, Cambridge (Massachusetts), Mountain View, Redmond, and San Francisco.

• Microsoft Research Redmond was founded on the Microsoft Redmond campus in 1991 working in buildings 112 and 113 and has now moved to their own facility in building 99. It currently has about 350 researchers and is headed by Peter Lee.
• Microsoft Research Cambridge was founded in 1997 by Roger Needham and now numbers over 100 employees. It maintains close ties to the University of Cambridge.
• Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) was founded in Beijing in November 1998. Advanced Technology Center was initially a group of MSRA until it became an independent R&D group of Microsoft.
• Microsoft Research Silicon Valley, located in Mountain View, California, was founded in August 2001. In January 2006, the Silicon Valley lab merged with Microsoft's Bay Area Research Center (BARC) in San Francisco.
• Microsoft Israel Innovation Labs (ILabs), building on its original R&D operation in Israel which was founded in 1991 and tapping into Israel's thriving high-tech community, Microsoft inaugurated in April 2006 the Israel Research & Development Center. The Israel R&D Center is situated in two main locations - in Herzliya, heartland of Israel's high tech industry, and in Matam, Haifa, home to many graduates of the Technion, Israel's leading technology university.^[5]
• Microsoft Research India was established in January 2005 in Bangalore and headed by Dr. P. Anandan.
• Cairo Microsoft Innovation Center (CMIC) was founded in 2006 by Tarek Elabbady and currently headed by Hussein Salama.
• Microsoft Research New England was established in 2008 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, adjacent to the MIT campus.

Collaborations

Microsoft Research also collaborates with and jointly operate research centers at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center^[6], Brown University, Carnegie Mellon University, INRIA^[7], Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Trento.^[8][9][10] There are also nine jointly-operated labs in China and Hong Kong.^[11]

Microsoft Research also supports research centers at many other universities.

Research projects

For the list of applied research groups from Microsoft Research, see Microsoft Research Labs (disambiguation).

• Microsoft Live Labs
• Microsoft Virtual Labs (for Window Server family research)

Allegiance (computer game) Audio Watermarking Bartok compiler Color Barcodes, to enhance capacity of barcodes Community Bar, context sensitive content plugin Data visualization library Digital Green, a farmer-generated, video-based social network service for agricultural extension in rural India ESL Assistant, a proofing tool for ESL English learners GLEE graph layout engine Gyro, which matured as .NET 2.0 generics Group Shot IceCube shared data synchronization engine HD View, a viewer that can aid in the display and interaction with very large (Gigapixel) images Hotmap, a mashup that shows where people have looked at using Virtual Earth Image Composite Editor Kodu JCluster clustering engine

MSBNx, Bayesian network toolkit MultiMouse, for shared usage of PC Penny Black Project Scalable Fabric, a Windows task management system Search Result Clustering toolbar SecPAL grid authorization language SenseCam SenseWeb Project SLAM project Strider GhostBuster rootkit detection system Strider URL Tracer / Typo-Patrol anti typosquatting system TulaFale, language for verifiable description of Web Services Virtual Ring Routing driver Vault, a safe version of C programming language Virtual WiFi, a WiFi adapter virtualizer Virtual India Web Assistant,[12] a contexual search system WWMX, geotagging digital images ZenZui Zing model checker

See also

• Microsoft Award
• Microsoft Research Maps

References

1. ^ Research Areas
2. ^ COSBI
3. ^ "COSBI". Centre for Computation and Systems Biology. http://www.cosbi.eu/. 
4. ^ Microsoft Research Overview
5. ^ Microsoft - Israel R&D Center
6. ^ BSC-Microsoft Research Centre
7. ^ Microsoft Research INIRIA Joint Centre
8. ^ Paff, Susan (2007-03-26). "Microsoft to create research center at CMU". http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/stories/2007/03/26/daily3.html. 
9. ^ Microsoft, CMU team up - Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
10. ^ Weisman, Robert (2004-03-22). "Microsoft's East Coast alliance". The Boston Globe. http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2004/03/22/microsofts_east_coast_alliance/. 
11. ^ Research
12. ^ "The first new feature of Internet Explorer 8?". http://apcmag.com/5549/the_first_new_feature_of_internet_explorer_8. Retrieved 2007-06-08. 

External links

• Official website
• Outline of Research Areas
• Microsoft Developing Project (news archive from Softpedia)