If the profound challenges and opportunities that AI brings to modern computing infrastructure excite you, particularly through the coordinated integration of systems and networking, we sincerely invite you to apply to the Microsoft Research Asia StarTrack Scholars Program. Applications are now open for the 2025 program. For more details and to submit your registration, visit our official website: Microsoft Research Asia StarTrack Scholars Program – Microsoft Research.
Two transformative trends are shaping the future of computing.
First, the relentless pursuit of scale: the drive to build ever-larger foundation neural models that push the boundaries of artificial intelligence (AI).
Second, the rise of agentic systems: fueled by the growing capabilities of AI, the corresponding systems are moving beyond passive prediction to active engagement, empowering AI agents that can autonomously reason, act, and interact with dynamic environments through tools, APIs, and other systems.
The Challenge of Scaling
The first trend exposes the fundamental limits of today’s AI infrastructure. Continued scaling faces severe constraints: energy consumption, manufacturing costs, and the diminishing returns of conventional GPU-based architectures as well as network technology. To sustain progress, future AI infrastructure must go beyond raw compute density and networking performance; it must rethink system and network design from the ground up.
The Challenge of Agentic Workloads
The second trend shifts our understanding of AI workloads themselves. Agentic systems blend large-model reasoning with diverse, CPU-centric tool use and environment interactions. This hybrid nature creates dynamic and heterogeneous computation patterns that challenge today’s GPU-dominated infrastructure. Building efficient systems for such workloads demands a deep understanding of how intelligence manifests across both GPU- and CPU-intensive tasks.
A Holistic Path Forward
We envision a holistic co-design between AI workloads and the underlying infrastructure.
AI itself must evolve to embrace new architectural paradigms, e.g., from uniform to non-uniform systems, from general-purpose to AI-aware hardware, and from monolithic to modular scalability.
Conversely, infrastructure must be reimagined to serve AI as its first-class citizen, shedding unnecessary general-purpose complexity to achieve unprecedented efficiency and scalability.
At the same time, frontier AI models now demonstrate a remarkable capability to understand and reason about complex system and networking concepts. This opens up a new frontier: AI-driven systems and networking innovation, where AI not only runs on infrastructure but co-designs and optimizes it, accelerating the evolution of computing itself.
Join Us
The Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) StarTrack Scholar Program invites outstanding young faculty worldwide to collaborate with our researchers on these frontier challenges. Together, we aim to redefine the boundaries between AI and infrastructure, and to pioneer the next generation of systems and networking innovations that will shape the AI era.
Microsoft Research Asia StarTrack Scholars advocates an open attitude, encouraging dialogue and joint experimentation with researchers from various disciplines to discover viable solutions. Now visit our official website to know more: Microsoft Research Asia StarTrack Scholars Program – Microsoft Research
Theme Team
- Yongqiang Xiong, Sr. Principal Research Manager, Microsoft Research Asia
- Fan Yang, Sr. Principal Research Manager, Microsoft Research Asia
- Jing Liu, Senior Researcher, Microsoft Research Asia
- Baotong Lu, Senior Researcher, Microsoft Research Asia
- Li Lyna Zhang, Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research Asia
- Yi Zhu, Senior Researcher, Microsoft Research Asia
- Ran Shu, Senior Researcher, Microsoft Research Asia
- Wenxue Cheng, Senior Researcher, Microsoft Research Asia
- Zhixiong Niu, Senior Researcher, Microsoft Research Asia
If you have any questions, please email Ms. Yanxuan Wu, program manager of the Microsoft Research Asia StarTrack Scholars Program, at v-yanxuanwu@microsoft.com
Artificial intelligence