By Douglas Gantenbein, Senior Writer, Microsoft News Center In December 2009, Sumit Gulwani, a senior researcher at Microsoft Research Redmond, was flying home from a seminar after presenting his work devising ways to synthesize complex pieces of code. Sitting next to him was a businesswoman.…
By Rob Knies, Managing Editor, Microsoft Research Rane Johnson-Stempson recalls vividly the moment last spring when she first encountered Katie Doran. “I had the opportunity to meet Katie in Seattle during the Graduate Cohort Program of the Computing Research Association’s Committee on the Status of…
By Douglas Gantenbein, Senior Writer, Microsoft News Center These days, nearly everyone stores things in the “cloud”—business-critical documents, personal photos, e-mail accounts … everything. Microsoft introduced Windows Azure Storage in 2008. Since then, that cloud offering has gained widespread use, not only within Microsoft, but…
By Douglas Gantenbein, Senior Writer, Microsoft News Center Pioneering research into programming biology has earned a Microsoft Research scientist a prestigious TR35 award, presented by Technology Review. Andrew Phillips, a 34-year-old scientist who leads the Biological Computation group at Microsoft Research Cambridge, received the award,…
By Janie Chang, Writer, Microsoft Research For the past 11 years, the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit has brought academic and government research professionals together to share perspectives on new research, the challenges facing the research community, and ways to break new ground. The 12th version…
By Douglas Gantenbein, Senior Writer, Microsoft News Center People love their smartphones—and they love to play games on them. On common smartphone software platforms, including Windows Phone, games are among the most popular applications and constitute the vast majority of downloads. “Games are killer apps…
By Douglas Gantenbein, Senior Writer, Microsoft News Center Today’s world, says Sumit Basu, increasingly is driven by massive amounts of data. “Take sociology,” says Basu, a researcher with the Knowledge Tools group at Microsoft Research Redmond. “In the past, most sociologists would use surveys and…
By Douglas Gantenbein, Senior Writer, Microsoft News Center Researchers and businesspeople around the world now have at their disposal a new way to perform massive computations over large quantities of unstructured data more quickly and easily than they’ve ever imagined. The reason: a Microsoft Research-developed…
By Rob Knies, Senior Editor, Microsoft Research Peter Lee is a bit of a daredevil, having pursued race-car driving in his youth. He’s also a fervent believer in the importance of finding beautiful solutions to computer-science challenges. And, as of Sept. 27, he’s a Microsoft…
By Janie Chang, Writer, Microsoft Research Everyone understands the energy-saving benefits of shutting down PCs or leaving them on standby before leaving the office. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that companies can achieve cost savings of $25 to $75 per PC annually if users…
By Rob Knies, Managing Editor, Microsoft Research You would be forgiven if you thought the “F” in F#—which made its debut as part of Visual Studio 2010 on April 12—stands for “functional.” After all, F#—pronounced “F sharp”—is a functional programming language for the .NET Framework…
By Janie Chang, Writer, Microsoft Research At Microsoft Research, there are computer scientists and mathematicians who live in a world of theory and abstractions. Then there is Nachi Nagappan, who was on loan to the Windows development group for a year while building a triage…
