The 28th General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) opened on August 20, 2012, at the China National Convention Center in Beijing, with WorldWide Telescope (WWT) prominently featured at the Microsoft Research exhibition. Astronomy is one of the oldest and most inspirational areas of…
Posted by Rob Knies Remember that time, a decade or so ago, when spam was the scourge of the Internet, when the sheer volume of junk email threatened to engulf legitimate correspondence and short-circuit the promise of the digital revolution?Those concerns are a bit…
Posted by Rob Knies A recent study by the Pew Research Center indicates that 80 percent of adults in the United States have searched for medical information online. Such a figure underscores the fundamental importance that humans place on their health and wellbeing—and their reliance…
Posted by Rob Knies First, there was Kinect. You’ve probably heard of that one. Next, it was KinectFusion, which uses live data from Kinect for Windows to create high-quality, 3-D models of a room and its contents. KinectFusion made a splash in 2011 during the…
Posted by Rob Knies On Nov. 26, 2011, the Mars rover Curiosity was launched from Cape Canaveral, a trip that will have taken more than eight months before Curiosity lands on the surface of the Red Planet.With excitement peaking in the days before the…
Korea’s Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE) recently announced that Microsoft Research Asia will once again be a key partner in the Information Technology Software Creative Research Program, which provides support to world-class researchers in that country. MKE plans to provide matching funds in the amount…
Posted by Rob Knies The set was simple: a simulated office, with a desk, a chair, a floor lamp, a wall calendar, a row of bookshelves packed with scores of academic journals, a scraggly-looking plant at stage right—“a depressingly faithful reproduction of my office,”…
The participants in the 2012 Microsoft Research Faculty Summit gained new appreciation for the changes facing the globe as David Breashears navigated the massive archive of photographic data that his team has gathered in many climbs through the Himalaya Mountains. We came away with a…
AIDS. Like many people, I was aware of the disease but had only a basic understanding of the history and impact of the AIDS pandemic. That all changed for me, thanks to my involvement in the AIDS Quilt Project. My name is Madison Allen, and…
As I was preparing to travel to Washington, D.C., for the 2012 exhibition of the AIDS Quilt and the International AIDS Conference, it occurred to me that this journey began a little less than a year ago, in nearly the same spot. I first learned…
The Microsoft Faculty Summit celebrates the ongoing collaboration of Microsoft Research and the academic community, providing a forum for leading faculty members and Microsoft personnel to collectively discuss the future of computing and its applications in solving real-world problems. This productive partnership extends all the…
Almost 90 PhD students convened for the seventh PhD Summer School The first week of July was an exciting one for us here at Microsoft Research Cambridge, as we hosted the seventh PhD Summer School. Each year, we invite scholars in the Microsoft Research PhD…
