Call For Collaborative Project Proposals:
We encourage project proposals which use technology (specifically, cloud and AI technologies) to have significant societal impact. Though we are open to considering any idea in the intersection of technology and societal impact, we have a specific interest in the following themes, since our researchers are actively working in these themes, and projects on these themes are likely to find collaborative interest with MSR:
• AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP) Technologies for Low Resource Languages
• Ludic Design for Accessibility
• Inclusive employment, crowdsourcing and gig work
• Data science for societal challenges
• Technologies for Health and well-being
• Public Awareness and Combating Misinformation
• Other systems and tools for societal impact
More details on each of these themes can be found in the themes tab.
Who can participate?
We invite project proposals from faculty at universities, social enterprises/start-ups and other entities who have research interests aligned to the above themes. Each project proposal should have one principal leader and can have other co-leaders. We welcome interdisciplinary approaches with collaborations involving technologists, social scientists and entrepreneurs.
Inspired by India
We invite project proposals that specifically focus on building and deploying systems at societal scale. As examples, 99Dots currently has over 200,000 patients registered and operates across several states in India, and in other parts of the world (eg. Myanmar). Digital Green operates in tens of thousands of villages across the word. We encourage projects with such aspirations. While we envisage solutions to be inspired, seeded and experimented in India, we expect that the results will be applicable/deployable in other countries across the world, with a scale of impact that can be truly global.
Collaborative Project Proposal Submission Guidelines:
Every collaborative project proposal should contain the following:
1. A precise problem statement on using cloud/AI technologies to solve significant societal challenges, preferably aligned to one or more of the above themes.
2. What are current and known approaches to address/solve this problem? What is being attempted? What are the limitations of current approaches, if any?
3. Proposed research effort / technology approach to address the problem. Please specify clearly what is unique in your thinking and approach, and any unique insights you have as to why you believe your approach will work.
4. Why do you want to collaborate with MSR? Please mention specific areas where MSR can contribute and add value, or interest in working with ongoing projects from MSR in this area. See the Technologies for Emerging Markets page or descriptions below for description of ongoing work at MSR)
5. Picture of success for the project, and vision for scale deployment, with timelines for the project.
Submitted project proposals should be no more than 2500 words (excluding references and supplementary material). Full consideration will be given to project proposals received by the end of business day on 21st September, 2018. Submissions received after this due date will be considered on a rolling basis depending on room we have in the program.
We also encourage submission of preliminary abstracts for feedback. For preliminary abstracts received before 30th August 2018, we will provide feedback, which we hope will be useful in revising and refining the project proposal. Ambitious projects with actionable and concrete plans will be given priority in the final selection.
An evaluation committee comprising members from MSR, academics, and entrepreneurs will select project proposals from the submissions received within the above deadline.
Funding
MSR will offer funding support of up to INR 35 Lakhs / USD 50K for each of the selected projects. Funding will be determined individually for each project basis the scope of the project and associated resource requirements.
Additional Support /Resources from MSR
MSR has expertise and active research agenda in the above themes and will act as advisors/collaborators for the selected projects.
Important: We envisage the selected projects to engage with MSR in a highly collaborative manner on the chosen problems. Researchers and engineers from MSR will actively be involved in the research as well as the development aspects of each selected project. The leader and team members (up to a maximum of 3 members) of the selected projects should spend 3 to 4 weeks at MSR India premises as part of this program over the next 12 months. Leaders are welcome to nominate students / team members as part of their project proposal, for the time to be spent at Microsoft Research India, as mentioned above.
MSR will cover for travel, accommodation and meal costs for the leaders and students/team members for the duration of their stay at the MSR premises. We will also provide resources like cloud/hosting , etc . This will be determined on a case by case basis.
Our goal is to collaborate with the selected projects and help the teams develop and demonstrate their idea using scale deployments, during the next 12 months and “graduate” the project to the next level. In some cases, members from MSR India will do field visits to assess and assist with deployments on a case-by-case basis.
Intellectual Property
All pre-existing IP (created prior to the start of the collaboration) will remain with its original owner (Microsoft or the participant). Licenses to pre-existing IP will be provided for the purpose of carrying out the collaboration; any licenses to pre-existing IP necessary for commercialization will be negotiated as needed. Any resulting IP that is created by the collaboration will either be owned by the party that created it (with a license to use and/or distribute granted to the other party), or it will be jointly owned with the goal of making it freely available to others.
Project proposals will only be shared with the selection committee and, if a project proposal is not selected the proposal will be returned/destroyed after the selection process is completed.
Important dates:
• Deadline for submitting project proposals (for full consideration): September 21st, 2018
•Notification of selected projects: 5th November 2018 (due to very high volumes of proposals received, the review committee needs more time to finalize projects)
• Kick-off with selected projects: 19th November 2018
(Subsequent rounds of selections may be done on a rolling basis)