What is the “beauty of programming”? In our eyes, it is the act of creating a program that is in itself beautiful—a program that uses sophisticated algorithms to solve real problems, meeting the user’s needs while ensuring the best experience in the least amount of…
Posted by Rob Knies In early June, Jamie Shotton received a most welcome email from Ramin Zabih, professor of computer science at Cornell Tech and chair of the IEEE Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI) Technical Committee.Zabih had the responsibility to let a gifted young…
Posted by Rob Knies Conventional wisdom holds that the use of GPS satellites to enable indoor mapping is a non-starter. GPS receivers, it is said, simply don’t work indoors, for a variety of reasons. While Earth’s outdoors environment has been mapped extensively, indoor localization of…
Posted by Rob Knies Operating a datacenter at web scale requires managing many conflicting requirements. The ability to deliver computation at a high level and speed is a given, but because of the demands such a facility must meet, a datacenter also needs flexibility. Additionally,…
Simon Peyton Jones’ contributions to computer science continue to be recognized, and now, so is his advocacy for computing education. On June 10, during the 35th annual conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation, hosted by SIGPLAN, the Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM’s) Special Interest…
Each year since 2005, Microsoft Research has awarded Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowships to promising, early-career academics who are engaged in innovative computing research and have the potential to make significant advances in the state of the art. These fellowships—which include a cash award and access…
We all know that human communication involves more than speaking—think of how much an angry glare or an acquiescent nod says. But apart from those obvious communications via body language, we also use our hands extensively while talking. While ubiquitous, our conversational hand gestures are…
Posted by Rob Knies When the world starts watching, it’s time for David Rothschild to shift into overdrive. Readers of this blog need little introduction to the work on prediction models from Rothschild, a Microsoft researcher and economist. Past posts have examined his efforts to…
On June 4, students, teaching staff, and guests gathered at Stanford University for the final presentations for CS247—Interaction Design Studio. While this core class in the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) track is offered every year, this year it was taught by two industrial researchers—I was invited…
Posted by Rob Knies Advances in computer science in recent years have had dramatic effects on how more traditional sciences are conducted in the 21st century. That has become common knowledge by now, but if you require further proof, just turn to the June 6…
Posted by Rob Knies Jaron Lanier is a man of many talents: computer scientist, composer, visual artist, author. He has been called the “father of virtual reality” for his groundbreaking efforts in the 1980s. In recent years, he has lent a strong, unique voice to…
Cybercity—there is no place quite like it. Home to numerous high-tech companies as well as the Microsoft India Development Center (MSIDC), this ever-growing part of Hyderabad, India, is the perfect location for the 36th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE). This gathering of 1,200 computer…
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