Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have become one of the hottest trends in higher education, providing access to high-quality classes from such elite universities as Stanford and MIT. MOOCs thus offer a new opportunity for self-directed learning for millions of students worldwide. However, most MOOC…
Posted by Rob Knies For years now, Microsoft researchers have been working with academics and scientists to unlock the riddles of quantum computing, a field that aims to merge the mysterious properties of quantum mechanics with computing. If achieved, a scalable quantum computer could rapidly…
—Harry Shum, Executive Vice President, Technology & Research I would like to thank the broad computing research community which has taken the time to share its thoughts and concerns about the recent closure of our research lab in Silicon Valley. I share with all of…
In preparation for my recent trip to Guarujá, Brazil, I did what any tech savvy eight-year-old would do: I searched the web for information about my destination. One of the top search results was a site that offered “41 Things to Do in Guarujá.” But…
Top university students from mainland China and Taiwan gathered in Beijing for the 14th annual Microsoft Student Summer Camp. From August 18 to 21, 2014, some 180 students descended on Microsoft’s Beijing West Campus for the fourteenth Microsoft Student Summer Camp. The students, representing more…
Posted by Rob Knies For many of us, the Internet offers limitless opportunities for enhancing our lives. We can catch up on news, shop for whatever our hearts desire, connect with our friends. The world at our fingertips—and in our pockets. For some, though, the…
Posted by Rob Knies Yesterday in this space, you learned about the engineering behind Xim, a free app from Microsoft Research that brings fun, interactive photo sharing to users of Windows Phones, Android phones, or iPhones.Developing a new app requires a mixture of skill sets,…
Day one of the 2014 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing: I’m here in Phoenix, Arizona, anxiously awaiting the keynote from Shafi Goldwasser, one of the most honored women in the field of computer science. As I survey the crowd, I can’t help but…
Posted by Rob Knies Editor's note: Xim 1.3, released December 17, 2014, extends photo-sharing to large screens via a host of streaming media devices. How easy is it to share these days? Pretty darned easy, as users of any mobile phone can attest. Take a…
Posted by Rob Knies The advent of the era of cloud computing is disrupting the IT industry, but one issue continues to impede a headlong rush to the cloud: trust. That’s the contention of Andrew Baumann, (@1andrewb) a Microsoft researcher whose paper Shielding applications from…
As any researcher knows, keeping up with scientific knowledge isn’t easy. This is especially true in the field of medical genetics, where advances in DNA sequencing technology have led to an exponential growth of genomics data. Such data hold the key to identifying disease genes…
Each year, Microsoft Research Asia welcomes a new group of Korean interns, who spend three months or more conducting exciting research. Like all Microsoft Research interns, these talented young scientists derive several benefits from their internships, not the least of which is the mentorship of…
