"There is so much opportunity for CMIC to cultivate talent, and to solve important problems, that I am optimistic it will make significant contributions to Microsoft, to Egypt and to the region."

By Dr. Abdelsalam Heddaya, Partner Development Manager

As a graduate student at Harvard University in the 1980s, I dreamt of creating a research center in Ismailia, Egypt, that would focus on problems drawn from the regional context, and provide regional industry with the potential to beat developed-country products in 3rd-world markets. I wrote a proposal for this center and circulated it among family, friends and colleagues. Many thought it could not be done, or if created, would not survive.

In the two decades since then, Egypt has changed dramatically, as measured by sustained impressive economic growth, far ahead of population growth, for most of that period. In visiting Egypt regularly, I could clearly see huge improvements accumulate from year to year. For example, I was amazed in 1997, to discover fiber-optic cables running to the Western Desert's El-Bahareyya oases. Not only was information technology infrastructure improving, but the software industry in Egypt was starting to generate world-class products, such as the venture-funded Netcelera, that spun-off from ITWorx, Egypt, and was eventually indirectly acquired by a major Seattle-based networking company. Therefore, I was optimistic about the prospects for CMIC, when Dr. Tarek Elabbady shared his vision for it with me in 2005.

For an organization like CMIC to flourish, it requires top talent, and problems that are relevant, important, ripe, and valuable. Recruiting and developing top talent is by far the most critical ingredient, especially in a research and incubation organization, so I volunteered to help interview select candidates for CMIC over the last year and a half. While the candidate pool was mixed, I think that the center has been able to put together an outstanding team so far. I had expected that only Egyptians and other Arabs would be attracted to CMIC's vision and potential, but I was pleasantly surprised when I was asked to interview an Indian candidate, who is an accomplished post-doctoral fellow in a top-tier US academic research institution, with a PhD from another top-tier UK university. This candidate proved to be a very creative researcher who cared deeply for the relevance of his work. He was also quite excited by the opportunity for impact that CMIC has. CMIC's challenge will be to develop its current talent, and to continue to attract the absolute best candidates with the skill and the clear-eyed emotional commitment to the mission.

The second most important success factor for CMIC is the choice and formulation of research and incubation problems. These problems must be relevant to the community, be important in leveraging solutions to other potentially larger problems, be ripe for solution in a reasonable time-frame, and have a clear potential for large economic pay-off. The selection of problems so far appears to meet these basic requirements. For example, the on-line collaborative learning project holds the potential to improve the scalability of delivering high quality learning experiences to many students at low cost. This can address the intense desire and need for high quality low-cost education in Egypt and the many other countries with similar economic and developmental conditions. At the same time, there are challenges that have thwarted the scalability of eLearning in developed countries, which will need to be circumvented by CMIC.

Overall, I am delighted to see that CMIC has become a reality and I am looking forward to CMIC's first round of presentations and demonstrations at the next Microsoft internal research conference and show (TechFest). Beyond that, there is so much opportunity for CMIC to cultivate talent, and to solve important problems, that I am optimistic it will make significant contributions to Microsoft, to Egypt and to the region.

Dr. Abdelsalam 'Solom' Heddaya is responsible for the Windows reliability development, measurement and analysis team. When he joined Microsoft in 2003, he had been Chief Technology Officer of InfoLibria, a leading Internet infrastructure company. Solom co-founded InfoLibria based on research that he lead during his decade as assistant and associate professor of computer science at Boston University.

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