Accelerating Foundation Models Research
Engaging the broader community in reimagining computing research
“AI is evolving faster than we ever thought possible, and the opportunities it’s opening up are mind-blowing. But this is more than shiny new tech; it’s about making a difference in the world. That’s why we’re launching this program—to build a global network of researchers who are as diverse as the challenges we face. We’re not just talking about models and algorithms; we’re talking about crossing boundaries, be it language, culture, or academic fields, to tackle some really big issues. Simply put, we aim to ensure that AI isn’t just for the few, but a game-changer for us all.”
– Peter Lee, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Research & Incubations
Foundation models are fuelling a fundamental shift in computing research, natural sciences, social sciences and computing education itself. And as industry-led advances in AI continue to reach new heights, we believe that a vibrant and diverse research ecosystem is essential to realizing the promise of AI to benefit each individual, organization and society worldwide.
Accelerate Foundation Models Research (AFMR) is a new research initiative where we are on a journey, working together with the broader research community, to explore different aspects of foundation models to accomplish three goals:
Align AI with shared human goals, values, and preferences via research on models, which enhances safety, robustness, sustainability, responsibility, and transparency, while ensuring rapid progress can be measured via new evaluation methods
Improve human interactions via sociotechnical research, which increases trust, human ingenuity, creativity, and productivity, and decreases the digital divide while reducing the risks of developing AI which does not benefit individuals and society
Accelerate scientific discovery in natural sciences via proactive knowledge discovery, hypothesis generation, and multiscale multimodal data generation
AFMR is a global research network and a resource platform, which enables a network of researchers with different expertise to engage on solving together some of the greatest technical and societal challenges of tomorrow. AFMR includes a grant program that provides access to state-of-the-art foundation models hosted on Microsoft Azure through Microsoft Azure AI services.
Our goal is to foster more collaborations across disciplines, institutions, and sectors, and to unleash the full potential of AI for a wide range of research questions, applications, and societal contexts. To that effect we engage with the research community through Calls for Proposals, mind-swaps, workshops, conferences.
Our collaborators
| Australian National University |
| Brigham and Women’s Hospital |
| Carnegie Mellon University |
| Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, University of Berlin, Germany |
| Cornell University |
| Ecole Polytechnique Federale De Lausanne (EPFL) |
| Emory University |
| George Mason University |
| Georgia Institute of Technology |
| Gwangju Institute of Science And Technology |
| Harvard University |
| Hebrew University |
| Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HCMUT) |
| Illinois Institute of Technology |
| Imperial College London |
| Indian Institute of Science |
| Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay |
| Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi |
| Indian Institute of Technology, Gandhinagar |
| Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad |
| Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur |
| Indian Institute of Technology, Tirupati |
| Johns Hopkins University |
| KAIST South Korea |
| Kennesaw State University |
| Loughborough University |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Monash University Malaysia |
| National University of Singapore |
| New York University |
| North Carolina A&T State University |
| Northeastern University |
| Oregon Health & Science University |
| Pennsylvania State University |
| Polytechnique Montreal |
| Princeton University |
| Rice University |
| Saarland University |
| Seoul National University |
| Simon Fraser University |
| Singapore University of Technology |
| Stanford University |
| The Ohio State University |
| The University of Hong Kong |
| The University of Nottingham |
| Tokyo Institute of Technology |
| Université de Montréal and Mila – Quebec AI Institute |
| University College London |
| University of Arizona |
| University of Bath |
| University of British Columbia |
| University of California, Berkeley |
| University of California, Los Angeles |
| University of California, San Francisco |
| University of California, Santa Cruz |
| University of California, Irvine |
| University of Cambridge |
| University of Chicago |
| University of Darmstadt |
| University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign |
| University of Leeds |
| University of Maryland |
| University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| University of Michigan, Ann Arbor |
| University of Missouri-Kansas City |
| University of New South Wales |
| University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill |
| University of North Carolina, Charlotte |
| University of North Texas |
| University of Notre Dame |
| University of Oxford |
| University of Pennsylvania |
| University of Rochester |
| University of Southern California |
| University of Texas, Austin |
| University of Texas, Southwestern Medical Center |
| University of Toronto |
| University of Toronto Scarborough |
| University of Virginia |
| University of Washington |
| University of Waterloo |
| University of Wisconsin-Madison |
| Waseda University |
| William & Mary |
| Yale University |
| York University |
Interested in collaborating?
If you are interested in finding out more about our existing projects and potential expansion of the program in FY24 please contact the team at msfmr@microsoft.com.