Our Research

Scientific research into complex environmental and biological systems will help provide the insights needed for effective policy change in government and increased environmental awareness in people. It will also provide the foundation for technological advancements in energy usage, resource management, and environmental planning. Microsoft Research is working with leading scientists to expand the boundaries of our knowledge of the planet. We’re also working to create the tools, technologies, and models to help accelerate scientific understanding on a global scale.

Atlantic Rainforest Sensor Net Research

Brazilian rainforests are of immense importance to the world, helping regulate climate temperatures, create rainfall, and provide habitat for biodiversity. In November 2009, Microsoft Research, in collaboration with researchers from the Johns Hopkins University and the University of São Paulo, deployed a network of sensors to study the Serra do Mar rainforest on minute-by-minute basis. The team used hundreds of sensors to measure temperature, water vapor, and solar radiation across a hill slope—essentially taking the vital signs of the rainforest.

This type of micrometeorology—the study of atmosphere just above the ground on small temporal and spatial scales—is critical to understanding how different ecosystems affect the ...continue reading

Atlantic Rainforest Sensor Net Research

Earth's climate and vice versa. Similar sensor networks can be deployed across extended terrain, in the ground and in the air, opening new ways of examining our climate and how various ecosystems interact.

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Desktop PC Energy Savings for Enterprises

Power management is one of the simplest, most effective ways for a company to reduce energy bills, yet many corporate users will override an operating system’s default sleep setting to preserve after-hours remote access to their office PCs. The Greening Corporate Networks with Sleep Proxy research project has developed a solution that saves energy by enabling PCs in sleep mode
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Desktop PC Energy Savings for Enterprises

to be available for remote network access and to maintain their network presence; the PCs awaken only when needed.

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Joulemeter

The Joulemeter project provides a modeling tool to measure the energy usage of virtual machines, servers, desktops, laptops, and even individual software applications running on a computer. The visibility provided by Joulemeter can be used to improve power-provisioning costs for data centers, virtualized power budgeting, desktop energy optimizations, and mobile battery management. The technology is especially helpful for IT leaders who analyze power-management settings,
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Joulemeter

PC users who wish to get fine-grained visibility into their computing energy use, and enthusiast developers who want to leverage power measurement for optimizing software and hosted service design for power usage.

Learn more about the Joulemeter project

Download the Joulemeter software