Episode 10, January 31, 2018 - We can program computers to do almost anything. But what about programming computers to… program computers? That’s a task that Dr. Rishabh Singh, and the team in the Cognition group at Microsoft Research, are tackling with Neural Program Synthesis,…
Episode 7, January 10, 2018 - When we look at a skyscraper or a suspension bridge, a simple search engine box on a screen looks tiny by comparison. But Dr. Simon Peyton Jones would like to remind us that computer programs, with hundreds of millions…
Class of 2018-19 PhD fellows to push frontiers of AI By Sandy Blyth A graduate student working on technology that leverages human brain signals to accelerate robot learning and another student who is developing models of human conversations that capture what is explicitly communicated and…
It is a bright afternoon in the Microsoft Research India lab. Research Fellow, Venkatesh Potluri, sits at his computer, frantically racing against the clock to fix one last bug before the end of the day. The computer blares into his headphones—not music, but a robotic…
On August 15, the sixth annual Microsoft Beauty of Programming Challenge — a programming competition for college students in Asia — came to a close. This year's theme focused on artificial intelligence question and answer (Q&A) projects. The challenge asked each team to create a…
A few years ago, my group in Microsoft’s research organization began to experiment with tools that make it possible for kids to learn how to code in the context of Minecraft, the wildly popular game where players build fantastical virtual worlds out of digital…
By Lily Sun, Research Program Manager of Microsoft Research Asia In February 2017, Microsoft and Cambridge University announced a DeepCoder algorithm that produces programs from problem inputs/outputs. DeepCoder, which operates on a novel yet greatly simplified programming language, cannot handle complex problems—general programming languages are…
By Nuno Lopes, Researcher, Microsoft Research Cambridge Think compilers cannot compromise the security of your application? Think twice! Compiler writers work around the clock to continuously deliver better compilers. They are driven by the ever-increasing importance of: Increasing performance (everyone wants their code to run…
By John Roach, Writer, Microsoft Research Charles P. Thacker, a visionary and hands-on electrical engineer who designed the first instances of key computing technologies that define modern life, died June 12 at his home in Palo Alto, California. He was 74. Bringing an idea to…
By Shaz Qadeer, Principal Researcher The complexity of emerging software applications requires new approaches to understanding and then efficiently building, testing and debugging these systems. Today’s software uses cloud resources, is often embedded in devices in the physical world and employs artificial intelligence techniques. These…
By Jim Pinkelman, Senior Director, Microsoft Research Since 2008, Microsoft Research has been awarding two-year PhD fellowships to computer science and related researchers at leading universities in the United States and Canada. These awards are designed to help promising young researchers focus on their studies,…
By Thomas Ball, Research Manager, Research in Software Engineering (RiSE) group, Microsoft Research The industrial research cycle Here is what I have told new hires of Microsoft Research (MSR) since I became a manager some 14 years ago: MSR gives you the freedom to explore…
