"The Future Of Computing Is The Computer That Talks, Listens, Sees And Learns. This Is What Is Being Created At Microsoft Research" - Bill Gates Microsoft Research (MSR) Asia, Microsoft's fundamental research arm in Asia Pacific, conducts fundamental curiosity driven research with the goal of realizing Microsoft's vision of future computing and of becoming one of the best computer science laboratories in the world. By harnessing the best talents from across Asia and the world, MSR Asia has grown from its nascent beginnings in 1998 to an accomplished research lab that is constantly creating technologies that push the state-of-the-art forward and improve the computing experience for information technology users.

In its short 7 years history, Microsoft Research Asia has grown into an organization that employs 180 researchers, has welcomed over 1800 interns, awarded 115 Microsoft fellowships, published 1100 papers in top international journals and conferences, and has achieved numerous technological breakthroughs.

The Advanced Technology Center (ATC) of MSR Asia, founded in 2003 to mark the research organizations five year anniversary in Asia, is focuses on cultivating products for the world market and accelerating the transfer of newly developed technologies and innovations from Microsoft Research into products. After a year and a half of rapid growth, MSR Asia ATC has welcomed more than 300 people to help facilitate it long term goals.

MSR Asia's ambitious research agenda highlights five areas that are central to Microsoft's long-term vision and strategy:

1. A next-generation user interface, which will allow users to interact with a computer using speech, gestures, and expressions.

2. Next-generation multimedia technologies, which will enable people to search for and be immersed in interactive and realistic online shopping, educational, meeting, and entertainment activities.

3. Digital Entertainment, which will allow users to have a more networked, interactive, and realistic entertainment experience in the future.

4. Wireless and networking technologies, which will empower people to access information any place, anytime, on any device.

5. Web Search and Data Mining, which will bring the current web search to the next level by applying data mining, machine learning, and knowledge discovery techniques to information analysis, organization, retrieval, and visualization.

MSR Asia consists of the following nine research groups and a development group:

1. Internet Media

2. Media Communication

3. Wireless and Networking

4. System Technology

5. Web Search and Mining

6. Natural Language Computing

7. Speech

8. Visual Computing

9. Internet Graphics

10. Multimodal User Interface

11. Center of Interactive Design

12. Center of Platform and Device

Technologies from the MSR Asia have made an impact on products including Microsoft Office XP, Office System 2003, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, X-box and Longhorn - the next major release of Windows. Some technologies from the lab have been adopted by international standard bodies such as MPEG4 (error-resilient video transmission), IETF (TCP/IP header compression) and ITU/ISO (video compression technology).

Over the years, MSR has excelled at creating an "academic environment" where researchers are free to pursue areas of science that are of interest to them and to foster a culture that looks for ways of making an impact on the world of information technology. This culture and environment not only drives researchers to develop groundbreaking technologies and work at the cusp of innovation, but has also made Microsoft Research Asia a natural partner for universities and academia in the region.

In the coming years, MSR Asia will continue to enhance its capabilities and strengthen its expertise while broadening its research initiatives in the region. Under Dr. Harry Shum, Managing Director, Microsoft Research Asia, and Dr. Hongjiang Zhang, Managing Director, Microsoft Research Asia Advanced Technology Center, MSR Asia researchers, driven by the possibilities of turning their ideas into reality, are changing the face of information technology.

For more information about MSR Asia, please visit our Chinese website:
http://www.research.microsoft.com/asia/ or English website
http://www.research.microsoft.com/aboutmsr/labs/beijing/

Management Profile

Harry Shum
Managing Director
Microsoft Research Asia
Dr. Harry Shum brings his extensive research skills, excellent management capabilities, and outstanding academic background to Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA), Microsoft's basic research arm in Asia-Pacific, where he serves as Managing Director and Senior Researcher overseeing and directing research activities and university relations.

Dr. Shum currently serves as the General co-Chair for the Tenth International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV 2005 Beijing) and is on the Editorial Board of IEEE Transaction's Circuit and System Video Technology and IEEE Transaction's Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence and Graphical Models. He has published more that 100 papers on computer vision, computer graphics, and robotics and been awarded more that 20 U.S. based patents.

Having joined Microsoft in 1996, Dr. Shum served as a researcher with Microsoft Research's Vision Technology Group in Redmond, Washington where he worked with Rick Szelisky on vision-based modelling and building 3-D environments from a sequence of two-dimensional video images. In 2000, Harry became the Assistant Managing Director of MSRA under Dr. Ya-Qin Zhang, during which time he was in charge of advancing research of MSRA's Visual Computing Group, Internet Graphics Group and Multimodal User Interface group.

Prior to joining Microsoft, Harry Shum was a Senior Research Scientist with the San Jose based start-up Realspace and completed internships at Apple's Interactive Media Lab and Digital Equipment Corporation's Cambridge Research Lab.

Dr. Harry Shum has a Ph.D. in Robotics from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University and is a graduate of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Hong Kong. His research interests include computer vision, computer graphics, human computer interaction, pattern recognition, statistical learning, and robotics. In his spare time, Harry enjoys watching a good football match, rooting for the Pittsburgh Steelers, and spending quality time with his family.