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Environmental Sustainability Research

Microsoft Corporate Environmental Sustainability

Driving a more sustainable world through mission-driven scientific research and applied technology

Research and innovation to make the world more sustainable

Environmental sustainability is a complex global challenge. Climate change is causing dramatic shifts to the environment and worldwide disruptions of unprecedented scale. The world needs to mobilize to understand and tackle these issues. Yet, many of the technologies we need to make the world more sustainable do not yet exist.

As a research community, we have an opportunity to leverage our expertise in computation, machine learning, modeling and simulation, systems and networking, computer vision and other disciplines to help us understand, model and predict our resource use and our changing climate – and engineer appropriate and effective solutions. As an industrial research lab, Microsoft Research has the capability to take on bold, high risk/high-reward projects, the opportunity to make long-term investments, as well as the ability to devote resources to shorter-term projects to achieve immediate impact.

Environmental sustainability is a significant research area at Microsoft. We are working on a wide portfolio of research projects that push the state of the art in science, engineering and economics to make Microsoft, our customers, and the world more sustainable. We are building on our long-standing relationships with the academic community and external partners, and our interdisciplinary work across chemistry, biology, physics and other fields. From modeling and prediction to understand our changing climate, to prevention and mitigation, we collaborate broadly and tackle difficult challenges using an interdisciplinary approach.

Check out the Microsoft Climate Research Initiative to learn more about how Microsoft and partners are driving toward a carbon negative future together.

Learn more about complementary work on Societal Resilience >

Highlights