Portrait of Jianfeng Gao

Jianfeng Gao

Technical Fellow & Corporate Vice President

News & features

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Microsoft Research Blog

| Ke Yang, Michel Galley, Chenglong Wang, Jianfeng Gao, Jiawei Han, and ChengXiang Zhai

It seems counterintuitive: giving AI agents more memory can make them less effective. As interaction logs accumulate, they grow large, fill with irrelevant content, and become increasingly difficult to use. More memory means that agents must search through larger volumes of…

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Microsoft Research Blog

| Reuben Tan, Baolin Peng, Zhengyuan Yang, Oier Mees, and Jianfeng Gao

Argos improves multimodal RL by evaluating whether an agent’s reasoning aligns with what it observes over time. The approach reduces visual hallucinations and produces more reliable, data-efficient agents for real-world applications.

Three white line icons on a gradient background transitioning from blue to pink. From left to right: a network or molecule structure with a central circle and six surrounding nodes, a 3D cube, and an open laptop with an eye symbol above it.
Microsoft Research Blog

| Yuncong Yang, Reuben Tan, Swadheen Shukla, and Jianfeng Gao

MindJourney can enable AI to navigate and interpret 3D environments from limited visual input, potentially improving performance in navigation, planning, and safety-critical tasks.

CollabLLM blog hero | flowchart diagram starting in the upper left corner with an icon of two overlapping chat bubbles; arrow pointing right to an LLM network node icon; branching down to show three simulated users; right arrow to a "Reward" box
Microsoft Research Blog

| Shirley Wu, Michel Galley, Baolin Peng, Swadheen Shukla, and Jianfeng Gao

Recipient of an ICML 2025 Outstanding Paper Award, CollabLLM improves how LLMs collaborate with users, including knowing when to ask questions and how to adapt tone and communication style to different situations. This approach helps move AI toward more user-centric…

Research Focus: April 23, 2025
Microsoft Research Blog

In this issue: our CHI 2025 & ICLR 2025 contributions, plus research on causal reasoning & LLMs; countering LLM jailbreak attacks; and how people use AI vs. AI-alone. Also, SVP of Microsoft Health Jim Weinstein talks rural healthcare innovation.

Research Focus -- Week of March 24
Microsoft Research Blog

In this issue, we examine a new conversation segmentation method that delivers more coherent and personalized agent conversation, and we review efforts to improve MLLMs’ understanding of geologic maps. Check out the latest research and other updates.

Gradient background transitioning from blue on the left to pink on the right. In the center, a rectangular box with ‘MAGMA’ written in bold white letters. To the left, an icon of a globe representing Earth. To the right, an icon of a computer monitor displaying a globe. Arrows connect these three elements in a circular flow, indicating interaction or data exchange between Earth, MAGMA, and the computer.
Microsoft Research Blog

| Swadheen Shukla, Jianwei Yang, Reuben Tan, Qianhui Wu, and Jianfeng Gao

Explore Magma, a foundation model that can empower AI assistants to interpret environments, plan actions, and execute tasks across digital and physical spaces. Now available, learn how it advances the field of agentic AI.

A gradient blue to green background features a white flowchart with rectangular boxes connected by arrows, ending in a hexagonal “STOP” sign and a check mark on the right side.
Microsoft Research Blog

| Baolin Peng, Xiao Yu, Hao Cheng, Michel Galley, Zhou Yu, and Jianfeng Gao

ExACT combines Reflective-MCTS and Exploratory Learning to improve AI agents' decision-making, enabling test-time compute scaling. Learn how these methods help agents refine strategies for state-of-the-art performance and improved computational efficiency.

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Microsoft Research Blog

| Chenglong Wang, Steven Drucker, Dan Marshall, Jeevana Priya Inala, Kori Inkpen, and Jianfeng Gao

Data Formulator investigates combining UI interactions with natural language input. Powered by AI, it can help users create or adapt visualizations and supports continuous refinement through an iterative process. Now available on GitHub.