{"id":593278,"date":"2019-07-17T00:00:28","date_gmt":"2019-07-17T07:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?post_type=msr-academic-program&#038;p=593278"},"modified":"2023-06-02T10:21:23","modified_gmt":"2023-06-02T17:21:23","slug":"microsoft-productivity-research","status":"publish","type":"msr-academic-program","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/academic-program\/microsoft-productivity-research\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft Productivity Research"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"what-it-is\">What it is<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Funding for collaborative research between Microsoft and universities working together to invent the future of productivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"how-to-apply\">How to apply<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The application period has now closed.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"request-for-proposals\">Request for Proposals<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Microsoft&nbsp;is&nbsp;committed to pushing the boundaries of technology to improve and positively influence all&nbsp;aspects&nbsp;of society.&nbsp;The cornerstone of&nbsp;how&nbsp;Microsoft does&nbsp;this&nbsp;is&nbsp;by&nbsp;building&nbsp;tools for&nbsp;personal and organizational&nbsp;productivity.&nbsp;New&nbsp;research,&nbsp;technologies,&nbsp;and&nbsp;services&nbsp;are creating opportunities for transforming&nbsp;productivity&nbsp;experiences&nbsp;in ways that were unimaginable just a few years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The future of productivity is collaborative, intelligent, and deeply embedded in the world around us.&nbsp;The nature of productivity is fundamentally changing with the emergence of the intelligent cloud and edge, increasing use of digital media, and&nbsp;new&nbsp;devices&nbsp;that&nbsp;keep getting smarter year after year. No longer is it enough for the tools&nbsp;Microsoft&nbsp;builds to merely help people be faster, more efficient, and better organized. Our tools must now help people approach problems in new ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The goal of this RFP is&nbsp;to&nbsp;spark new research that will&nbsp;expand our understanding of productivity and fundamentally change the&nbsp;ways that people work and live.&nbsp;To&nbsp;help&nbsp;accomplish this goal, Microsoft intends to&nbsp;fund $1 million USD in new collaborative research&nbsp;efforts&nbsp;with university partners&nbsp;so that we can&nbsp;invent the future of&nbsp;productivity&nbsp;together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"goal\">Goal<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Research is an integral part of the innovation loop. Some of the most exciting research is happening in universities around the world.&nbsp;The goal of the&nbsp;Microsoft Productivity Research&nbsp;(MPR)&nbsp;RFP&nbsp;is to&nbsp;establish new&nbsp;university partnerships&nbsp;to collaborate with Microsoft on&nbsp;novel research potentially leading to new capabilities for&nbsp;productivity technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Proposals are invited on&nbsp;all areas of computing related to productivity in the following areas of interest:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Interaction and Sensing,&nbsp;e.g.,&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>New&nbsp;interaction paradigms for productivity beyond the desktop, including using computer vision and human-language technologies.&nbsp;Interactive task completion via natural language.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Conversational intelligence that augments existing interactions between people or enables new interaction between people and one or more virtual agents. Multi-agent interaction.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Support for the full task lifecycle, including the identification of task structure via human input and automation. The use of task structure to support&nbsp;microproductivity, mobile productivity, and cross-device task completion.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Machine Learning and Machine Teaching, e.g.,&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Trustworthy and secure systems that learn from large datasets&nbsp;in&nbsp;privacy-preserving&nbsp;manners.&nbsp;Transfer learning for productivity&nbsp;that applies&nbsp;across people, teams, organizations,&nbsp;or&nbsp;tasks&nbsp;while limiting data leakage.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Machine teaching methods&nbsp;that enable&nbsp;people without machine learning&nbsp;expertise&nbsp;to teach&nbsp;a&nbsp;system to get better&nbsp;over time.&nbsp;Novel approaches to reward people for their contributions&nbsp;to the system.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Intelligible AI systems&nbsp;that&nbsp;are transparent in their purpose and how they&nbsp;arrived at specific decisions. Explainable AI.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Attention and Engagement, e.g.,&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Emotional intelligence in productivity settings, including the ability to adapt to people\u2019s emotional state.&nbsp;Support for focus and flow, including detecting and maintaining flow.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In-depth context understanding and applications thereof (e.g., situational understanding, reasoning, and action). Proactive contextual notifications and recommendations.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Methods for capturing people\u2019s underlying intent, and metrics&nbsp;for measuring productivity that tie short term observable behavior&nbsp;to long term goals. The use of choice architectures to enable people to accomplish their goals.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Collaboration and Human Learning, e.g.,&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Computer-supported lifelong learning, including contextual just-in-time training&nbsp;and&nbsp;social learning.&nbsp;Personal self-reflection and growth&nbsp;for&nbsp;people and teams, including the&nbsp;use&nbsp;of&nbsp;data to diagnose and address productivity challenges.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Approaches that explore the future of work via freelancing, distributed work, and dynamic teaming. Techniques that enable and enhance human-in-the-loop systems.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Systems and processes that support ethical and inclusive approaches to future productivity scenarios.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"monetary-and-other-awards\">Monetary and other awards<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Microsoft will provide up to $250,000 USD of funding and other resources for each proposal. Microsoft will provide a payment that has no restrictions on how it is used. A second round of funding pending initial progress and outcomes (see Timeline below) may be considered at some point during this collaboration. All funding decisions will be at the sole discretion of Microsoft. Proposals for this RFP should provide an initial budget and workplan for the research based on the Timeline section below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Microsoft encourages&nbsp;potential university partners to consider using resources in the following manner:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>PhD scholarship stipends.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Post-doctoral researcher&nbsp;funding&nbsp;at the university.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Software\/hardware&nbsp;engineer funding at the university.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Travel and accommodation expenses of researchers and students visiting Microsoft&nbsp;(see below for details).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Limited but essential hardware and software needed to conduct the research.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Proposal&nbsp;plans should include any of these, or other items,&nbsp;that directly support the proposed research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For those proposals requiring specialty hardware, Microsoft is making a limited number of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/surface\/business\/surface-hub-2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Surface Hub 2S*<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/hololens\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">HoloLens 2S**<\/a> and <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/azure.microsoft.com\/en-us\/services\/kinect-dk\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Azure Kinect***<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> devices available to support this research. Proposals seeking to integrate these devices should be explicit in how and why inclusion of these devices is necessary to accomplish the research goals and the value they will add to the anticipated research outcomes. Device requests should be limited to the lowest possible number of units required for accomplishing the research goals. The value of devices does not need to be accounted for in the budget section of the proposal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Microsoft also encourages the strategic use of Microsoft technologies (APIs, specialty hardware, dataset, or SDKs) and open data sets when appropriate to the research questions being investigated. Researchers are invited to consider using <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/tools\/?facet%5Btax%5D%5Bmsr-focus-area%5D%5B%5D=243736\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">productivity resources<\/a> found in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/tools\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Microsoft Researcher Tools Index<\/a> and\/or <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/msropendata.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Microsoft Research Open Data Repository<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> if applicable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the conclusion of the research collaboration, Microsoft will host each winning team&nbsp;at our offices for a&nbsp;week-long&nbsp;workshop. This will be a venue where research will be shared with relevant researchers and other teams inside of Microsoft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Proposal budgets should include costs for 3-5 members of the university\u2019s&nbsp;MPR&nbsp;team to travel to Redmond, Washington for&nbsp;five&nbsp;business&nbsp;days of meetings with Microsoft.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Microsoft research collaborators, at no cost to the winning teams,&nbsp;will&nbsp;visit&nbsp;the&nbsp;university&nbsp;partner&nbsp;one or more times&nbsp;to foster collaborative&nbsp;planning and&nbsp;research.&nbsp;These&nbsp;visits will be agreed upon and scheduled after&nbsp;an&nbsp;award decision&nbsp;is&nbsp;made.&nbsp;Likewise, a cadence of meetings will be mutually agreed upon at the start of the collaboration.&nbsp;Proposals&nbsp;are welcome to&nbsp;include other suggestions about how to foster an effective&nbsp;collaborative research engagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"eligibility\">Eligibility<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>This&nbsp;RFP is not restricted to any one discipline or tailored to any particular methodology.&nbsp;Universities are welcome to submit cross-disciplinary proposals&nbsp;if that&nbsp;contributes&nbsp;to answering the proposed research question(s).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To be eligible for this&nbsp;RFP, your institution and proposal must meet the following requirements:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Institutions must have access to the knowledge, resources, and skills necessary to carry out the proposed research.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Institutions must be either an accredited&nbsp;or otherwise&nbsp;degree-granting university with&nbsp;non-profit status or a research organization with non-profit status.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Proposals that are incomplete or request funds&nbsp;more than&nbsp;the maximum award will be excluded from the selection process.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The proposal budget should reflect your university\u2019s policies toward receiving unrestricted gifts and should emphasize allocation of funds toward completing the research proposed.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>While we will accept multiple proposals from a single university, only one&nbsp;MPR&nbsp;unrestricted gift&nbsp;will be awarded&nbsp;to&nbsp;a single university. To optimize the chances of receiving an award, we encourage researchers from the same university to consider submitting a single, joint proposal (rather than multiple individual proposals) that benefits from their various skills and interests to create the strongest possible proposal.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Multiple universities can submit a joint\/single proposal together. Please clearly indicate in the budget section how the budget, not to exceed $250,000 USD, will be shared.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"selection-process-and-criteria\">Selection Process and&nbsp;Criteria<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>All proposals received by the submission deadline and in compliance with the eligibility criteria will be evaluated by a panel of subject-matter experts chosen from Microsoft. Drawing from evaluations by the review panel, Microsoft will select which proposals&nbsp;will receive&nbsp;the&nbsp;awards. Microsoft reserves the right to fund&nbsp;the&nbsp;winning proposal at an amount greater or lower than the amount requested, up to the stated maximum amount.&nbsp;<strong>Note:<\/strong>&nbsp;Microsoft&nbsp;will not&nbsp;provide individual feedback on proposals that are not funded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All proposals will be evaluated based on the following criteria:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Addresses an important research&nbsp;area&nbsp;identified above<\/strong>&nbsp;that, if answered, has the potential to have a significant impact on that&nbsp;domain.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Expected value and potential impact<\/strong>&nbsp;of the research&nbsp;on productivity of people and organizations.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Potential for wide dissemination and use<\/strong>&nbsp;of knowledge, including specific plans for scholarly publications, public presentations, and white papers.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Ability to complete the project<\/strong>&nbsp;based upon adequate available resources, reasonable timelines, and the identified contributors\u2019 qualifications.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Qualifications of&nbsp;the research team,<\/strong>&nbsp;including previous history of work in the area, successful completion of previous projects, research or teaching awards, and scholarly publications.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Diversity<\/strong>&nbsp;is highly valued and&nbsp;research teams should strive to reflect a diversity of backgrounds, experiences and talent.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Evidence of university support<\/strong>&nbsp;contributed in-kind to directly support and supplement the research efforts.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Budget<\/strong> is strategic to maximize impact of research.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Possible additional information<\/strong>&nbsp;as requested by the review panel, which might be requested via a conference call.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"timeline\">Timeline<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Proposals should submit a timeline (approximately 12-18 months) or workplan that begins in early 2020 and ends in summer of 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>October 16, 2019:<\/strong>&nbsp;Proposals&nbsp;due.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>December 15, 2019:<\/strong>&nbsp;Winners&nbsp;announced.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Early&nbsp;2020:<\/strong>&nbsp;Awards&nbsp;made&nbsp;and&nbsp;planning&nbsp;begins&nbsp;with&nbsp;regularly scheduled meetings,&nbsp;calls&nbsp;and visit(s)&nbsp;by Microsoft to&nbsp;MPR&nbsp;winning&nbsp;university.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Early&nbsp;2021:<\/strong>&nbsp;Review of progress&nbsp;for&nbsp;second&nbsp;round of funding (pending&nbsp;progress and availability of funds).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Summer 2021:<\/strong>&nbsp;Report back,&nbsp;five-day&nbsp;meeting&nbsp;at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"conditions\">Conditions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>As a condition of accepting an award, principal investigators agree that Microsoft may use their name and likeness to publicize their proposals (including all proposal content except detailed budget information) in connections with the promotion of the research awards in all media now known or later developed.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Researchers&nbsp;will be willing to engage with Microsoft about their project and experience, and provide&nbsp;updates&nbsp;via&nbsp;monthly or&nbsp;quarterly&nbsp;calls, as well as attend&nbsp;a&nbsp;workshop at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington. The&nbsp;workshop will likely be held in&nbsp;the&nbsp;summer&nbsp;of 2021.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The review process is an internal one and no&nbsp;review&nbsp;feedback will be given to submitters.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Microsoft encourages researchers to publish their work in scholarly venues such as journals and conferences.&nbsp;Researchers must provide Microsoft a copy of any work prior to publication.\u202fSo long as accurate, such publications are not subject to Microsoft\u2019s approval except that, at Microsoft\u2019s request, researcher will delete any Microsoft Confidential Information identified or delay publication to enable Microsoft to file for appropriate intellectual property (IP)&nbsp;protection for any project IP disclosed in such work.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>All data sets and any new IP resulting from this effort will be made public and publicly available for any researcher, developer or interested party to access to help further the goals of this initiative in providing higher quality and better access to technology services that empowers people and organizations to be more productive.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Funded researchers must seek approval of their institution\u2019s review board for any work that involves human subjects.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>At the completion of the project, the funded researchers will be required to submit to Microsoft a white paper that describes what was learned from this project.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"geographic-availability\">Geographic Availability<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>*<strong>Surface Hub 2S<\/strong> will be available in the following countries. If you are applying from a country not included in this list, please do not include a request for Surface Hub 2S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-9d6595d7 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Australia<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Austria<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Belgium<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Bulgaria<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Canada<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Croatia<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Czech Republic<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Denmark<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Estonia<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Finland<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>France<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Germany<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Greece<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Hong Kong<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Hungary<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Ireland<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Italy<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Japan<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Latvia<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Lithuania<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Luxembourg<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Netherlands<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>New Zealand<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Norway<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Poland<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Portugal<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Qatar<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Romania<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Singapore<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Slovakia<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Slovenia<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Spain<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Sweden<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Switzerland<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>United Arab Emirates<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>United Kingdom<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>United States<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>**<strong>HoloLens 2<\/strong>&nbsp;will be available in the following countries. If you are applying from a country not included in this list, please do not include a request for HoloLens 2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Australia<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>France<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Germany<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Ireland<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>New Zealand<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>United Kingdom<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>United States<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>***<strong>Kinect for Azure<\/strong>&nbsp;will be available in the following countries. If you are applying from a country not included in this list, please do not include a request for Kinect&nbsp;for Azure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>China<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>United States<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"collaborative-research-proposal-requirements\">Collaborative Research Proposal Requirements<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Proposals must be written in English&nbsp;and submitted through the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?post_type=msr-academic-program&p=593278&secret=7nyUjT#!application-form\">Application Form<\/a>. Proposals must be uploaded no later than 11:59 PM (Pacific Daylight Savings Time) on October 16, 2019. Questions should be sent to <a href=\"mailto:MPR_RFP@Microsoft.com\">MPR_RFP@Microsoft.com<\/a> and must be received by October 2 in order to allow adequate time for response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Microsoft shall have no obligation to maintain the confidentiality of any submitted proposals. Therefore, proposals should not contain information that is confidential, restricted, or sensitive. Proposals will be evaluated by a panel of subject-matter experts chosen from Microsoft. Microsoft reserves the right to make the winning proposals publicly available, except those portions containing budgetary information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Length:<\/strong> The proposal should not be more than seven pages in length of Times New Roman 11-point font. Any documentation beyond that length will not be included as part of the proposal review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The seven-page limit includes the cover page but the proposal can start on the cover page if additional space is needed. Scholarly references\/bibliography can be submitted in addition to the seven pages and will not count toward the seven-page limit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Cover page:<\/strong> The proposal should have a cover page that provides the following information:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Biographical information and contact information:<\/strong> This should include a\u00a0brief\u00a0description of any relevant prior research, publications, or other professional experience.\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Faculty with deep technical experience related to the research&nbsp;areas&nbsp;described above are encouraged to apply. Indicate estimated&nbsp;level of effort\/amount of time each faculty member will spend on the project.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Post-doctoral researchers&nbsp;and mid-&nbsp;to late-stage PhD students with deep technical experience related to the research should be included in proposals. Indicate the estimated&nbsp;level of effort\/amount of time each&nbsp;post-doctoral researcher&nbsp;and PhD student will spend on the project.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Project proposal abstract:<\/strong> The abstract should contain the following:\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>A&nbsp;nontechnical&nbsp;description of the project that states the problem to be studied and explains the project\u2019s broader significance and importance.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A technical description of the project that states the goals and scope of the research, and the methods and approaches to be used.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Proposal body:<\/strong>&nbsp; The proposal&nbsp;body&nbsp;should include the following information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Project description:<\/strong>&nbsp;Include what&nbsp;set of questions&nbsp;based on the identified research scenarios&nbsp;above,&nbsp;will be addressed&nbsp;and how they&nbsp;will&nbsp;be addressed. Describe&nbsp;how answering these questions&nbsp;will&nbsp;help advance&nbsp;the state-of-the-art in&nbsp;productivity research.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Approach:<\/strong>&nbsp;Describe&nbsp;the methodological and theoretical approach that the researchers will&nbsp;use. Explain exactly how the researchers&nbsp;will&nbsp;go about answering the question.&nbsp;Describe how the researchers will handle the legal and ethical challenges of doing work in this area.&nbsp;This section should also describe how the university&nbsp;MPR&nbsp;team proposes to work with Microsoft counterparts (researchers and engineers) to ensure&nbsp;an&nbsp;effective and positive collaboration.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Resources:<\/strong> Proposals should specify if and how Microsoft technologies will be used, namely (1) APIs, (2) Specialty devices including Surface Hub 2*,&nbsp;HoloLens 2**, Kinect for Azure***, (3) Data sets, etc. if applicable.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Expected results:<\/strong> Briefly describe what new knowledge is likely to be generated&nbsp;as a result&nbsp;of&nbsp;this research,&nbsp;why these results would be significant, and how this could benefit&nbsp;information workers of tomorrow.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Related research: <\/strong>Briefly summarize related research, including references where appropriate.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Researcher roles:<\/strong> Describe the role of each researcher involved in the project and explain how their skills and knowledge enable them to address the proposed research.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>~12-18-month Timeline\/Workplan and Schedule:<\/strong>&nbsp;Describe what milestones will be used to measure progress of the project during the year and when they&nbsp;will&nbsp;be completed.&nbsp;If the project is part of a larger ongoing research program, estimate the time for completion of this project only.&nbsp;It is expected that&nbsp;the award&nbsp;will be made on or after January 1, 2020. Project timelines should reflect starting times on or&nbsp;shortly&nbsp;after this date.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Use of funds:<\/strong> Provide a budget (in U.S. dollars) describing how the award will be used. The budget should be presented as a table with the total budget request clearly indicated.&nbsp;Microsoft will consider requests for Azure credits necessary to conduct research. Value of Azure credits will not be considered a part of the budget request.&nbsp;Azure requests should be&nbsp;included in the budget table.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Other support:<\/strong> Include other contributions to this project (cash, goods, and services)&nbsp;by your university or other sources, if any, but do not include the use of university\/organization facilities that are otherwise provided on an ongoing basis.&nbsp;Describe other grants or funded research that may be leveraged to add value to this research effort.&nbsp;<strong>Note:<\/strong>&nbsp;authors of&nbsp;the selected&nbsp;proposal will be required to submit an original letter on their institution\u2019s letterhead, certifying the commitment of any additional or matching support described in the proposal.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>Yes, multiple universities can submit a joint\/single proposal together. Please clearly indicate in the budget section how the budget, not to exceed $250,000 USD, will be shared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>Yes, Microsoft will pay each university directly provided the budget clearly illustrates the amount to be paid to each university with a total not to exceed $250,000 USD.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>While we will accept multiple proposals from a single university, only one MPR unrestricted gift will be awarded to a single university. To optimize the chances of receiving an award, we encourage researchers from the same university to consider submitting a single, joint proposal (rather than multiple individual proposals) that benefits from their various skills and interests to create the strongest possible proposal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>Project timelines should be approximately 12-18 months. They should reflect the total time estimated to complete the research proposed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>Yes, proposals must indicate which of the listed research areas will be investigated as part of the proposed research to be eligible for consideration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>It would be considered a positive for the proposal to have a researcher in Microsoft who is supportive but we don\u2019t require it or expect it. If a researcher in Microsoft is interested in expressing support for your proposal, they should send an email of support to <a href=\"mailto:MPR_RFP@Microsoft.com\">MPR_RFP@Microsoft.com<\/a> with the university PI(s) on cc when the proposal is submitted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>Yes, proposal budget requests can be of any amount up to $250,000 USD.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>The budget is part of the seven-page limit. Scholarly references\/bibliography can be submitted in addition to the seven pages and will not count toward the seven-page limit but all of the other required components will count toward the seven-page limit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>No, letters of support will not count toward the seven-page limit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>As long as the full proposal doesn\u2019t exceed seven pages the rest of the section lengths are flexible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>No, proposals are not required to or expected to include these resources. They are merely referenced as optional resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>Applicants should request a limited number of specialty devices (low single digits) that are critical to answering the research questions in the proposal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>We would be looking for cost-share. This is not a mandatory requirement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>We would be looking for contributions that directly support the research efforts here so indirect-costs that cover items such as facilities and infrastructure would not count toward university support\/cost-share\/in-kind contribution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>Since this is not a requirement, there is no expected amount.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>The funds will be considered a gift that has no restrictions on how it is used.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>There are no restrictions on how the funds are used. We do request that how the funds will be used is clearly illustrated in the required budget portion of the proposal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>There are no restrictions on how the funds are used. We do request that how the funds will be used is clearly illustrated in the required budget portion of the proposal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>The proposal budget should reflect your university\u2019s policies toward receiving unrestricted gifts and should emphasize allocation of funds toward completing the research proposed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>As unrestricted gifts, it will be entirely up to the winners to decide how to spend the award to achieve the research goals in the proposal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>I\u2019m afraid we will not be able to provide access to any data that is not already publicly available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>Yes, the results of this research are meant to be open and public for unrestricted use by future researchers and technologists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>You are encouraged to assemble a team that is most likely to achieve the greatest results within the time and budget parameters required.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>Both of these scenarios are valuable. The results of this research will be open and public and so they are meant to drive future research and technology development. More insight on how people work together leading to implications for designs of future tools \u2013 though not designed just by Microsoft but others as well that are working in these topic areas would be of interest. However, if you feel you can develop breakthrough prototypes that also inform future research then that would also be interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n<h2>2019 Microsoft Productivity Research Collaboration Winners<\/h2>\n<div style=\"height: 10px;\">\u00a0<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-630768 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/MPR2020_Mirjam-Augstein_Thomas-Neumayr_310x208-300x201.jpg\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/MPR2020_Mirjam-Augstein_Thomas-Neumayr_310x208-300x201.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/MPR2020_Mirjam-Augstein_Thomas-Neumayr_310x208.jpg 310w\" alt=\"2020 Microsoft Productivity Research Collaboration winners: Mirjam Augstein and Thomas Neumayr\" width=\"300\" height=\"201\" \/><\/p>\n<h3>Mirjam Augstein and Thomas Neumayr<\/h3>\n<p>University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria<\/p>\n<p><strong>Microsoft lead collaborator:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/people\/serintel\/\">Sean Rintel<\/a><\/p>\n<h3>Supporting Hybrid Collaboration for the Teams of Tomorrow<\/h3>\n<p>Tomorrow\u2019s information workers are increasingly employed in flexible work settings and oftentimes come upon situations where they engage in hybrid meetings and hybrid collaboration. Although such situations, with their dynamic interplay between co-located and remote collaborators, are increasingly supported by software and hardware tools, there are still significant research gaps related to the description and analysis of such settings (which would also allow for more targeted tool support). Thus, the full potential of existing tools such as the Microsoft Surface Hub with its software solutions for co-located (e.g., Shared Whiteboard) or remote (audio and video conferencing) collaboration in the collaborative settings of the future is not yet fully exploited and requires in-depth conceptual as well as technological research. The envisioned research endeavor includes 1) thorough grounding work on a descriptive framework for hybrid collaboration, a small part of which already exists and was published at ACM CSCW (receiving a best paper award) and 2) technical work on a software prototype for the support of hybrid meetings and in-depth (on-the-fly as well as post-hoc) analysis functionalities based on Microsoft hardware and software tools and APIs. To draw conclusions, we will conduct an extensive qualitative user study.<\/p>\n<h3>Research engagement results<\/h3>\n<p><strong>Workstream 1:<\/strong> Establish models and frameworks that are capable of capturing the distinct nature of hybrid collaboration and meeting activities, building on the grant holders\u2019 prior <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/dl.acm.org\/doi\/abs\/10.1145\/3274397\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Domino framework<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>. A systematic literature review was carried out together with colleagues from Aarhus University.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, territoriality, as an analytic lens often used to inform the design of collaborative systems, was investigated in a hybrid setting. Traditionally, most interactions in co-located settings happen inside one of Personal, Group, or Storage Territories. Data was collected from a range of collaboration groups and several novel aspects of communication channels and access, as well as visibility of certain hybrid territories have been found. These observations led to the definition of a list of 9 design implications.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Outputs:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Mirjam Augstein, Thomas Neumayr, Johannes Sch\u00f6nb\u00f6ck, and Carrie Kovacs. 2023. <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/3544548.3580989\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Remote Persons Are Closer Than They Appear: Home, Team and a Lockdown<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI &#8217;23). Association for Computing Macinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 615, 1\u201325. (<em>The work reported in this article has mainly been conducted within the scope of the Hybrid Collaboration Spaces (HYCOS) project, funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) [P 34928]. The underlying data was collected during the Supporting Hybrid Collaboration for the Teams of Tomorrow (SHCTT) project, funded through a Microsoft Productivity Research Grant awarded to Mirjam Augstein\u00a0and Thomas Neumayr in 2019<\/em>.)<\/li>\n<li>Thomas Neumayr, Mirjam Augstein, and Bettina Kubicek. 2022. <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/3555224\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Territoriality in Hybrid Collaboration<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 6, CSCW2, Article 332 (November 2022), 37 pages.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Thomas Neumayr, Banu Saatci, Sean Rintel, Clemens Nylandsted Klokmose, and Mirjam Augstein. 2022. Retrieved June 2, 2023, from <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"http:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/2111.06172\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">What was Hybrid? A Systematic Review of Hybrid Collaboration and Meetings Research<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Workstream 2:<\/strong> Partially automate the cumbersome analysis process of collaborative settings\u202f(including hybrid ones) and making it accessible to larger audiences. A prototype research pipeline was developed, using AI services to complement and reduce human coding efforts of observational data (e.g., audiovisual recordings and depth information). The resulting ACACIA prototype is capable of recognizing people, objects, and regions of interest, which can also be annotated in an editor. Furthermore, based on the insights gained during the research in the first workstream, to some extent, the closeness of collaboration can be extracted from these data. Future work will focus on further improving ACACIA and bridging the gap to the semi-automated extraction of coupling styles.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Outputs:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Thomas Neumayr, Mirjam Augstein, Johannes Sch\u00f6nb\u00f6ck, Sean Rintel, Helmut Leeb, and Thomas Teichmeister. 2022. <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/dl.acm.org\/doi\/10.1145\/3567724\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Semi-automated Analysis of Collaborative Interaction: Are We There Yet?<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 6, ISS, Article 571 (December 2022), 27 pages.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The collaboration between MSR and the UAS will continue along the lines of further improving ACACIA and both sides would also like to make use of the opportunity to conduct user studies together in the grant holders\u2019 new 4-year project about Hybrid Collaboration Spaces (Austrian Science Fund P 34928 Standalone Project).<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-630810 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/MPR2020_Margaret-Beier_150x208px.jpg\" alt=\"2020 Microsoft Productivity Research Winner: Margaret Beier\" width=\"150\" height=\"208\" \/><\/p>\n<h3>Margaret Beier<\/h3>\n<p>Rice University<\/p>\n<p><strong>Microsoft lead collaborator:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/people\/marycz\/\">Mary Czerwinski<\/a><\/p>\n<h3>TeamDNA: Productivity-enhancing Tools for Diverse and Distributed Teams<\/h3>\n<p>In this project, we are inspired by the question: what are the fundamental elements that impact team productivity?, for example, what constitutes the \u201cDNA of team productivity?\u201d Due to the necessity and prevalence of teamwork in the workplace, cracking this code and building better teams has the potential to significantly improve workplace productivity and also the teamwork experience. As one would expect, the topic has been studied extensively, especially in Organizational Psychology. However, to date, most prior research has combined human observations with self-reported data, thereby resulting in high-level insights but not deployable systems. Thanks to advances in engineering and Microsoft platforms that enable the real-time tracking of team interactions, we have a unique and unprecedented opportunity to study and improve team processes.<\/p>\n<h3>Research engagement results<\/h3>\n<p>This project focuses on developing <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/teamdna.blogs.rice.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><i>TeamDNA<\/i><span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, an automated system that can measure and provide insight into complex and dynamic team processes. Grounded in psychological theory, and enabled by advances in engineering, TeamDNA aims to leverage audio-visual recordings of team meetings to understand key metrics related to individual participation, team dynamics, and the impact of diversity on both individual and team metrics. Results of this work can inform teamwork science and practices for developing more effective teams. The primary two research thrusts are detailed below.<\/p>\n<p>1) Develop novel methods to extract action sequences from interpersonal interactions.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Chen, Xu (2021) TeamDNA: Automatic Measures of Effective Teamwork Processes from Unconstrained Team Meeting Recordings. Unpublished dissertation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>2) Establish objective measures that correlate with meaningful psychological indicators of team dynamics, role emergence, performance, and satisfaction within teams.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>O\u2019Bryan LR, Segarra S, Paoletti J, Zajac, S, Beier M, Sabharwal A, Wettergreen M, Salas E. (Under Review) Modeling Conversational Turn-taking for Insights into Unequal Patterns of Communication Within Multinational Teams.<\/li>\n<li>O\u2018Bryan LR, Oxendahl T, Beier M, Sabharwal A (2021) Communication and the Emergence of Collective Intelligence in Virtual Teams. Remote oral presentation at the <i>Association for Psychological Science Virtual Convention<\/i><\/li>\n<li>O\u2019Bryan, LR (2020) Approaching studies of collective intelligence in human teams from the perspective of animal swarm intelligence. Remote oral presentation at the <i>ACM Collective Intelligence Conference 2020<\/i><\/li>\n<li>O\u2019Bryan LR, Beier, M, Salas, E (2020) <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2079-3200\/8\/1\/9\/htm\">How approaches to animal swarm intelligence can improve the study of collective intelligence in human teams<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>. <i>Journal of Intelligence<\/i>, 8(1), 9<\/li>\n<li>O\u2019Bryan LR, Cao J, Torres WJ, Sabharwal A, Beier ME (2019) Objective measurement of individual-level communication behaviors underlying interactions within diverse teams. Poster presentation at the <i>31<\/i><i>st<\/i><i> Association for Psychological Science Annual Convention<\/i>. Washington D.C.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For more about this project, contact: <em>Margaret E. Beier<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-630762 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/MPR2020_Jim-Hollan_150x208.jpg\" alt=\"2020 Microsoft Productivity Research Collaboration winner: Jim Hollan \" width=\"150\" height=\"208\" \/><\/p>\n<h3>Jim Hollan<\/h3>\n<p>University of California \u2013 San Diego<\/p>\n<p><strong>Microsoft lead collaborator:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/people\/nath\/\">Nathalie Riche<\/a><\/p>\n<h3>A Human-Centered Information Space<\/h3>\n<p>For far too long we have conceived of thinking as something that happens exclusively in the head. Thinking happens in the world as well as in the head. Thinking is a distributed, socially-situated activity that exploits the extraordinary facilities of language, media, and embodied interaction with the world. With computers becoming ubiquitous and intertwined with every sphere of life, today we increasingly think with computers. This is accelerated by a radically changing cost structure in which the cost to use a thousand computers for a second or day is not appreciably more than to use one computer for a thousand days or seconds. Yet with all the advances in capacity, speed, and connectivity, using computers too often remains difficult, awkward, and frustrating. Even after six decades of design evolution, there is little of the naturalness, spontaneity, and contextual sensitivity required for convivial interaction with information. We argue that this is a result of a legacy document and application-centered design paradigm that presupposes information is static and disconnected from the context of processes, tasks, and personal histories. We propose a new human-centered view of information: as dynamic entities whose representation and behavior are designed in accordance with the cognitive requirements of human activity.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-630750 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/MPR2020_Chris-North_Doug-Bowman_310x208-300x201.jpg\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/MPR2020_Chris-North_Doug-Bowman_310x208-300x201.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/MPR2020_Chris-North_Doug-Bowman_310x208.jpg 310w\" alt=\"2020 Microsoft Productivity Research Collaboration winners: Chris North and Doug Bowman\" width=\"300\" height=\"201\" \/><\/p>\n<h3>Chris North and Doug Bowman<\/h3>\n<p>Virginia Tech<\/p>\n<p><strong>Microsoft lead collaborators:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/people\/richst\/\">Rich Stoakley<\/a>, March Rogers<\/p>\n<h3>Evaluating Physical and Virtual Large Displays for Windows Productivity Beyond the Desktop<\/h3>\n<p>The fundamental space limitations of small display monitors pose significant problems for information workers\u2019 productivity. The increased availability of low-cost, large physical displays and the coming feasibility of virtual displays (viewed through AR and VR headsets) will open fundamentally new user interface opportunities. However, little is known about the value of these modalities for desktop use, the trade-offs between physical and virtual displays, and how to best exploit them for productivity tasks. Our goal is to collect empirical data that will inform the design of future productivity hardware and software, such as Microsoft Windows and Office. These results could help to free users from the confines of current desktop environments and lead to the next major revolution in increased productivity.<\/p>\n<h3>Research engagement results<\/h3>\n<p>The partnership with Virginia Tech explored how virtual monitors can be used to improve productivity through augmented reality. By looking at range scenarios \u2013 from mobile knowledge work to working from home to low vision contexts \u2013 the team found ways to expand beyond small screen and monitors that occupy physical space. These videos give an example of the immense flexibility virtual monitors can bring regardless of how much display space is needed:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=bAjVqzxKGko&list=PLrq-dp5o2lMNaHsdamUvlC-1nFiHIAUWI&index=18\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Virtual Monitors \u2013 Virtual Condition<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=h3qY-RNvvpQ&list=PLrq-dp5o2lMNaHsdamUvlC-1nFiHIAUWI&index=19\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Virtual Monitors \u2013 Hybrid Condition<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=bB4PvN3ufSM&list=PLrq-dp5o2lMNaHsdamUvlC-1nFiHIAUWI&index=17\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Virtual Monitors \u2013 Containers Condition<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZmdaPHx3x6Y&list=PLrq-dp5o2lMNaHsdamUvlC-1nFiHIAUWI&index=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Virtual Monitors \u2013 Curved Canvas<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ENP7dQKEKNI\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Do we still need physical monitors?<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> (presentation at IEEE VR 2021)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-630759 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/MPR2020_Dragomir-Radev_150x208.jpg\" alt=\"2020 Microsoft Productivity Research Collaboration winner: Dragomir Radev\" width=\"150\" height=\"208\" \/><\/p>\n<h3>Dragomir Radev<\/h3>\n<p>Yale University<\/p>\n<p><strong>Microsoft lead collaborator:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/people\/hassanam\/\">Ahmed Hassan Awadallah<\/a><\/p>\n<h3>Improving Employee Productivity Using Text Summarization<\/h3>\n<p>Company employees spend a large fraction of their time reading text documents such as company policies, technical manuals, patents, research papers, industry news articles, and email, among others. Reading text takes time that can be used for other work-related activities or for enjoying more leisure time. We are proposing to improve employee productivity, both during onboarding and throughout their entire careers, through automatic text summarization techniques. We will develop a generic, state of the art library, named SummerTime, that will be used on summarization tasks, such as single-document and multi-document summarization, query-based summarization, text simplification, and text re-targeting. The code base will be flexible enough to allow the introduction of new techniques, data sets, and evaluation metrics. We will also implement a number of classic and recent neural algorithms and also improve the state of the art using transfer learning and several novel neural architectures.<\/p>\n<h3>Research engagement results<\/h3>\n<p>The project with Yale focused on improving productivity via dialogue summarization. Dialogue summarization has become increasingly important since the COVID-19 pandemic given the growth in video conferencing, and the team created and released a benchmark to measure how well current models perform in the dialogue domain.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>QMSum: A New Benchmark for Query-based Multi-domain Meeting Summarization <\/em>(NAACL 2021). Ming Zhong, Da Yin, Tao Yu, Ahmad Zaidi, Mutethia Mutuma, Rahul Jha, Ahmed Hassan Awadallah, Asli Celikyilmaz, Yang Liu, Xipeng Qiu, and Dragomir Radev. Accepted by NAACL 2021. [<a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/Yale-LILY\/QMSum\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">GitHub<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/underline.io\/events\/122\/sessions\/4285\/lecture\/19778-qmsum-a-new-benchmark-for-query-based-multi-domain-meeting-summarization\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">video<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/underline.io\/events\/122\/posters\/4291\/poster\/20774-qmsum-a-new-benchmark-for-query-based-multi-domain-meeting-summarization\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">poster<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The team also developed state-of-the-art methods for dialog and long-form text summarization. Their results can enable meeting summarization models to help new employees\u2019 onboarding process or new student\u2019s learning process by providing a concise summary of meeting or class interactions.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>An Exploratory Study on Long Dialogue Summarization: What Works and What\u2019s Next<\/em> (EMNLP 2021). Yusen Zhang, Ansong Ni, Tao Yu, Rui Zhang, Chenguang Zhu, Budhaditya Deb, Asli Celikyilmaz, Ahmed Awadallah, and Dragomir Radev<\/li>\n<li><em>Summ^ N: A Multi-Stage Summarization Framework for Long Input Dialogues and Documents<\/em> (ACL 2022). Yusen Zhang, Ansong Ni, Ziming Mao, Chen Henry Wu, Chenguang Zhu, Budhaditya Deb, Ahmed Awadallah, Dragomir Radev, Rui Zhang<\/li>\n<li><em>DYLE: Dynamic Latent Extraction for Abstractive Long-Input Summarization<\/em> (ACL 2022). Ziming Mao, Chen Henry Wu, Ansong Ni, Yusen Zhang, Rui Zhang, Tao Yu, Budhaditya Deb, Chenguang Zhu, Ahmed Awadallah, Dragomir Radev<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The team also developed a new, wide-coverage summarization library named SummerTime. SummerTime targets non-expert users to expand access for state-of-the-art summarization models to a wider range of people. Users of the library do not need an NLP background and functionality is provided to help identify the best model to use for a particular case, including visualization, automatic model selection, and automatic model assembly.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>SummerTime: Text Summarization Toolkit for Non-experts<\/em> (submitted to EMNLP 2021, Demo Track). Ansong Ni, Zhangir Azerbayev, Mutethia Mutuma, Troy Feng, Yusen Zhang, Tao Yu, Ahmed Awadallah, Dragomir Radev [<a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/Yale-LILY\/SummerTime\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">GitHub repository<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For more about this project, contact: <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/people\/hassanam\/\">Ahmed H. Awadallah<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-630747 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/MPR2020_Akane-Sano_150x208.jpg\" alt=\"2020 Microsoft Productivity Research Collaboration winner: Akane Sano\" width=\"150\" height=\"208\" \/><\/p>\n<h3>Akane Sano<\/h3>\n<p>Rice University<\/p>\n<p><strong>Microsoft lead collaborator:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/people\/marycz\/\">Mary Czerwinski<\/a><\/p>\n<h3>Unobtrusive Personalized Work Engagement Assistant<\/h3>\n<p>Work engagement and workload\/task management are important aspects of achieving successful and productive everyday information work missions. However, work tasks\/schedules and strategies to promote work engagement and well-being could vary from person to person. It is hard to adapt one strategy to all workers. In this proposal, we examine the hypothesis that multi-modal ubiquitous sensors and AI technologies help design a personalized work engagement assistant to suggest personalized productivity management strategies and provide unobtrusive personalized feedback to enhance work engagement and well-being. The aim of the proposed work is to develop and validate an unobtrusive personalized closed-loop system to measure work engagement and workload and provide personalized real-time feedback including work engagement management assistant and subtle sensory feedback based on the user\u2019s physiological and behavioral data. We are focused on the development of unobtrusive and practical technologies and selected the optimal sets of tools and mechanisms based on our team\u2019s interdisciplinary work: ubiquitous and effective sensing and computing, computational imagining, machine learning, organizational psychology, and human-computer interaction.<\/p>\n<h3>Research engagement results<\/h3>\n<p>The team has developed study protocols to study workers remotely during covid-19 and\u202fconducted multiple cohort studies for different types of workers in different locations such as IT workers in the office and at home, hospital shift workers, and caregivers.<\/p>\n<p>The team\u202fquantified people\u2019s behavioral and physiological patterns and analyzed the relationships among work patterns, digital device usage, behavioral features such as sleep and mobility patterns, and work productivity, and health\u202fand wellbeing outcomes (e.g. mental health, engagement, burnout). Prediction models were developed to infer productivity and health\/wellbeing outcomes.\u202fThe team also implemented and tested the system to run the inference models on the\u202fcloud and tested the efficacy of interventions.<\/p>\n<p>Yusuke Nishimura, Tahera Hossain, Akane Sano, Shota Isomura, Yutaka Arakawa, Sozo Inoue, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Nishimura_abc_2021.pdf\">Toward the Analysis of Office Workers\u2019 Mental Indicators Based on Wearable, Work Activity, and Weather Data<\/a>\u201c, International Conference on Activity and Behavior Computing (ABC), 2021, [<a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdrive.google.com%2Ffile%2Fd%2F1hPlfe2FMvdBcN95egkzpuhRPPpLw_Gcy%2Fview%3Fusp%3Dsharing&data=04%7C01%7Croyz%40microsoft.com%7Cf96529b54fea496785ac08d9afa7e7f1%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C637733957970314116%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=Q5hlrKq4cPRmbsMIwGDAo5QIwgD9i%2Buh31f8DFFpYh4%3D&reserved=0\">pdf<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>] (Best Paper Award)<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-630753 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/MPR2020_Cyrus-Shahabi_150x208.jpg\" alt=\"2020 Microsoft Productivity Research Collaboration winner: Cyrus Shahabi\" width=\"150\" height=\"208\" \/><\/p>\n<h3>Cyrus Shahabi<\/h3>\n<p>University of Southern California<\/p>\n<p><strong>Microsoft lead collaborator:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/people\/jckrumm\/\">John Krumm<\/a><\/p>\n<h3>Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning Techniques for Improving Individual and Organizational Productivity<\/h3>\n<p>Studying patterns of human activity (e.g., moving behaviors, daily routines, organizational workflows) can significantly improve productivity. Neural networks are a powerful tool to capture such patterns, but they need large amounts of individual data (e.g., location data) to train on, which raises significant privacy concerns. This project will design and implement differentially-private techniques to train neural networks. We will focus on skip-grams, which are suitable for sparse data, especially when used in conjunction with negative sampling. We will design algorithms that can build accurate models for human activity patterns, even under strict privacy constraints. We will also study privacy budget allocation strategies across different stages of the model, and we will perform tuning of model hyper-parameters to improve accuracy and performance.<\/p>\n<h3>Research engagement results<\/h3>\n<p>The collaboration with USC consisted of three different workstreams.<\/p>\n<p>The first effort created:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A density-aware technique for publication of OD matrices in a differentially private way,<\/li>\n<li>An extension of the OD concept to multiple dimensions that allows one to quantify privately the frequency of certain trajectory segments of interest, and<\/li>\n<li>An ML-based technique for accurately answering differentially private range count queries on geospatial data. All techniques were extensively tested using large-scale real datasets and significantly outperformed all existing state-of-the-art approaches.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The second parallel effort identified a new problem of quantifying the intrinsic value of information of trajectories, including a technique for quantifying the intrinsic VOI of trajectories:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Sina Shaham, Gabriel Ghinita, Cyrus Shahabi. <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=VPsgtsH69gs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Enhancing the Performance of Spatial Queries on Encrypted Data Through Graph Embedding<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> (presentation at DBSEC 2020).<\/li>\n<li>Sina Shaham, Gabriel Ghinita, Cyrus Shahabi. <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=rb1_wJC-JZE\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">An Efficient and Secure Location-based Alert Protocol using Searchable Encryption and Huffman Codes<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> (presentation at EDBT 2021).<\/li>\n<li>Sepanta Zeighami, Gabriel Ghinita, Cyrus Shahabi. <a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1vHtvY6PBG_dJN4E_tdkfqSGI785_j1SZ\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Secure Dynamic Skyline Queries Using Result Materialization<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> (presentation at ICDE 2021).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The third effort worked on evaluating a methodology for different diseases and transmission models and quantifying the impact of sampling bias. The team considered the spread of SARS and the flu, in addition to work on COVID-19. Results showed the robustness of the method to bias in observed trajectories.<\/p>\n<p>For more about this project, contact: <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/people\/jckrumm\/\">John Krumm<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"featured_media":594688,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","msr_hide_image_in_river":0,"footnotes":""},"msr-opportunity-type":[155533],"msr-region":[256048],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-program-audience":[243727],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"class_list":["post-593278","msr-academic-program","type-msr-academic-program","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","msr-opportunity-type-grants-and-fellowships","msr-region-global","msr-locale-en_us","msr-program-audience-faculty"],"msr_description":"","msr_social_media":[],"related-researchers":[],"tab-content":[{"id":0,"name":"About","content":"<h3>What it is<\/h3>\r\nFunding for collaborative research between Microsoft and universities working together to invent the future of productivity.\r\n<h3>How to apply<\/h3>\r\n<strong>The application period has now closed.<\/strong>\r\n<h2>Request for Proposals<\/h2>\r\nMicrosoft\u00a0is\u00a0committed to pushing the boundaries of technology to improve and positively influence all\u00a0aspects\u00a0of society.\u00a0The cornerstone of\u00a0how\u00a0Microsoft does\u00a0this\u00a0is\u00a0by\u00a0building\u00a0tools for\u00a0personal and organizational\u00a0productivity.\u00a0New\u00a0research,\u00a0technologies,\u00a0and\u00a0services\u00a0are creating opportunities for transforming\u00a0productivity\u00a0experiences\u00a0in ways that were unimaginable just a few years ago.\r\n\r\nThe future of productivity is collaborative, intelligent, and deeply embedded in the world around us.\u00a0The nature of productivity is fundamentally changing with the emergence of the intelligent cloud and edge, increasing use of digital media, and\u00a0new\u00a0devices\u00a0that\u00a0keep getting smarter year after year. No longer is it enough for the tools\u00a0Microsoft\u00a0builds to merely help people be faster, more efficient, and better organized. Our tools must now help people approach problems in new ways.\r\n\r\nThe goal of this RFP is\u00a0to\u00a0spark new research that will\u00a0expand our understanding of productivity and fundamentally change the\u00a0ways that people work and live.\u00a0To\u00a0help\u00a0accomplish this goal, Microsoft intends to\u00a0fund $1 million USD in new collaborative research\u00a0efforts\u00a0with university partners\u00a0so that we can\u00a0invent the future of\u00a0productivity\u00a0together.\r\n<h2>Goal<\/h2>\r\nResearch is an integral part of the innovation loop. Some of the most exciting research is happening in universities around the world.\u00a0The goal of the\u00a0Microsoft Productivity Research\u00a0(MPR)\u00a0RFP\u00a0is to\u00a0establish new\u00a0university partnerships\u00a0to collaborate with Microsoft on\u00a0novel research potentially leading to new capabilities for\u00a0productivity technologies.\r\n\r\nProposals are invited on\u00a0all areas of computing related to productivity in the following areas of interest:\r\n\r\n<strong>Interaction and Sensing,\u00a0e.g.,\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>New\u00a0interaction paradigms for productivity beyond the desktop, including using computer vision and human-language technologies.\u00a0Interactive task completion via natural language.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Conversational intelligence that augments existing interactions between people or enables new interaction between people and one or more virtual agents. Multi-agent interaction.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Support for the full task lifecycle, including the identification of task structure via human input and automation. The use of task structure to support\u00a0microproductivity, mobile productivity, and cross-device task completion.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<strong>Machine Learning and Machine Teaching, e.g.,\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Trustworthy and secure systems that learn from large datasets\u00a0in\u00a0privacy-preserving\u00a0manners.\u00a0Transfer learning for productivity\u00a0that applies\u00a0across people, teams, organizations,\u00a0or\u00a0tasks\u00a0while limiting data leakage.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Machine teaching methods\u00a0that enable\u00a0people without machine learning\u00a0expertise\u00a0to teach\u00a0a\u00a0system to get better\u00a0over time.\u00a0Novel approaches to reward people for their contributions\u00a0to the system.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Intelligible AI systems\u00a0that\u00a0are transparent in their purpose and how they\u00a0arrived at specific decisions. Explainable AI.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<strong>Attention and Engagement, e.g.,\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Emotional intelligence in productivity settings, including the ability to adapt to people\u2019s emotional state.\u00a0Support for focus and flow, including detecting and maintaining flow.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>In-depth context understanding and applications thereof (e.g., situational understanding, reasoning, and action). Proactive contextual notifications and recommendations.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Methods for capturing people\u2019s underlying intent, and metrics\u00a0for measuring productivity that tie short term observable behavior\u00a0to long term goals. The use of choice architectures to enable people to accomplish their goals.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<strong>Collaboration and Human Learning, e.g.,\u00a0<\/strong>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Computer-supported lifelong learning, including contextual just-in-time training\u00a0and\u00a0social learning.\u00a0Personal self-reflection and growth\u00a0for\u00a0people and teams, including the\u00a0use\u00a0of\u00a0data to diagnose and address productivity challenges.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Approaches that explore the future of work via freelancing, distributed work, and dynamic teaming. Techniques that enable and enhance human-in-the-loop systems.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Systems and processes that support ethical and inclusive approaches to future productivity scenarios.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<h2>Monetary and other awards<\/h2>\r\nMicrosoft will provide up to $250,000 USD of funding and other resources for each proposal. Microsoft will provide a payment that has no restrictions on how it is used. A second round of funding pending initial progress and outcomes (see Timeline below) may be considered at some point during this collaboration. All funding decisions will be at the sole discretion of Microsoft. Proposals for this RFP should provide an initial budget and workplan for the research based on the Timeline section below.\r\n\r\nMicrosoft encourages\u00a0potential university partners to consider using resources in the following manner:\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>PhD scholarship stipends.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Post-doctoral researcher\u00a0funding\u00a0at the university.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Software\/hardware\u00a0engineer funding at the university.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Travel and accommodation expenses of researchers and students visiting Microsoft\u00a0(see below for details).<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Limited but essential hardware and software needed to conduct the research.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\nProposal\u00a0plans should include any of these, or other items,\u00a0that directly support the proposed research.\r\n\r\nFor those proposals requiring specialty hardware, Microsoft is making a limited number of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/surface\/business\/surface-hub-2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Surface Hub 2S*<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/hololens\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">HoloLens 2S**<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/azure.microsoft.com\/en-us\/services\/kinect-dk\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Azure Kinect***<\/a> devices available to support this research. Proposals seeking to integrate these devices should be explicit in how and why inclusion of these devices is necessary to accomplish the research goals and the value they will add to the anticipated research outcomes. Device requests should be limited to the lowest possible number of units required for accomplishing the research goals. The value of devices does not need to be accounted for in the budget section of the proposal.\r\n\r\nMicrosoft also encourages the strategic use of Microsoft technologies (APIs, specialty hardware, dataset, or SDKs) and open data sets when appropriate to the research questions being investigated. Researchers are invited to consider using <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/tools\/?facet%5Btax%5D%5Bmsr-focus-area%5D%5B%5D=243736\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">productivity resources<\/a> found in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/tools\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Microsoft Researcher Tools Index<\/a> and\/or <a href=\"https:\/\/msropendata.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Microsoft Research Open Data Repository<\/a> if applicable.\r\n\r\nAt the conclusion of the research collaboration, Microsoft will host each winning team\u00a0at our offices for a\u00a0week-long\u00a0workshop. This will be a venue where research will be shared with relevant researchers and other teams inside of Microsoft.\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Proposal budgets should include costs for 3-5 members of the university's\u00a0MPR\u00a0team to travel to Redmond, Washington for\u00a0five\u00a0business\u00a0days of meetings with Microsoft.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\nMicrosoft research collaborators, at no cost to the winning teams,\u00a0will\u00a0visit\u00a0the\u00a0university\u00a0partner\u00a0one or more times\u00a0to foster collaborative\u00a0planning and\u00a0research.\u00a0These\u00a0visits will be agreed upon and scheduled after\u00a0an\u00a0award decision\u00a0is\u00a0made.\u00a0Likewise, a cadence of meetings will be mutually agreed upon at the start of the collaboration.\u00a0Proposals\u00a0are welcome to\u00a0include other suggestions about how to foster an effective\u00a0collaborative research engagement.\r\n<h2>Eligibility<\/h2>\r\nThis\u00a0RFP is not restricted to any one discipline or tailored to any particular methodology.\u00a0Universities are welcome to submit cross-disciplinary proposals\u00a0if that\u00a0contributes\u00a0to answering the proposed research question(s).\r\n\r\nTo be eligible for this\u00a0RFP, your institution and proposal must meet the following requirements:\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Institutions must have access to the knowledge, resources, and skills necessary to carry out the proposed research.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Institutions must be either an accredited\u00a0or otherwise\u00a0degree-granting university with\u00a0non-profit status or a research organization with non-profit status.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Proposals that are incomplete or request funds\u00a0more than\u00a0the maximum award will be excluded from the selection process.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>The proposal budget should reflect your university\u2019s policies toward receiving unrestricted gifts and should emphasize allocation of funds toward completing the research proposed.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>While we will accept multiple proposals from a single university, only one\u00a0MPR\u00a0unrestricted gift\u00a0will be awarded\u00a0to\u00a0a single university. To optimize the chances of receiving an award, we encourage researchers from the same university to consider submitting a single, joint proposal (rather than multiple individual proposals) that benefits from their various skills and interests to create the strongest possible proposal.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Multiple universities can submit a joint\/single proposal together. Please clearly indicate in the budget section how the budget, not to exceed $250,000 USD, will be shared.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<h2>Selection Process and\u00a0Criteria<\/h2>\r\nAll proposals received by the submission deadline and in compliance with the eligibility criteria will be evaluated by a panel of subject-matter experts chosen from Microsoft. Drawing from evaluations by the review panel, Microsoft will select which proposals\u00a0will receive\u00a0the\u00a0awards. Microsoft reserves the right to fund\u00a0the\u00a0winning proposal at an amount greater or lower than the amount requested, up to the stated maximum amount.\u00a0<strong>Note:<\/strong>\u00a0Microsoft\u00a0will not\u00a0provide individual feedback on proposals that are not funded.\r\n\r\nAll proposals will be evaluated based on the following criteria:\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li><strong>Addresses an important research\u00a0area\u00a0identified above<\/strong>\u00a0that, if answered, has the potential to have a significant impact on that\u00a0domain.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Expected value and potential impact<\/strong>\u00a0of the research\u00a0on productivity of people and organizations.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Potential for wide dissemination and use<\/strong>\u00a0of knowledge, including specific plans for scholarly publications, public presentations, and white papers.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Ability to complete the project<\/strong>\u00a0based upon adequate available resources, reasonable timelines, and the identified contributors\u2019 qualifications.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Qualifications of\u00a0the research team,<\/strong>\u00a0including previous history of work in the area, successful completion of previous projects, research or teaching awards, and scholarly publications.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Diversity<\/strong>\u00a0is highly valued and\u00a0research teams should strive to reflect a diversity of backgrounds, experiences and talent.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Evidence of university support<\/strong>\u00a0contributed in-kind to directly support and supplement the research efforts.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Budget<\/strong> is strategic to maximize impact of research.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Possible additional information<\/strong>\u00a0as requested by the review panel, which might be requested via a conference call.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<h2>Timeline<\/h2>\r\nProposals should submit a timeline (approximately 12-18 months) or workplan that begins in early 2020 and ends in summer of 2021.\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li><strong>October 16, 2019:<\/strong>\u00a0Proposals\u00a0due.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>December 15, 2019:<\/strong>\u00a0Winners\u00a0announced.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Early\u00a02020:<\/strong>\u00a0Awards\u00a0made\u00a0and\u00a0planning\u00a0begins\u00a0with\u00a0regularly scheduled meetings,\u00a0calls\u00a0and visit(s)\u00a0by Microsoft to\u00a0MPR\u00a0winning\u00a0university.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Early\u00a02021:<\/strong>\u00a0Review of progress\u00a0for\u00a0second\u00a0round of funding (pending\u00a0progress and availability of funds).<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Summer 2021:<\/strong>\u00a0Report back,\u00a0five-day\u00a0meeting\u00a0at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<h2>Conditions<\/h2>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>As a condition of accepting an award, principal investigators agree that Microsoft may use their name and likeness to publicize their proposals (including all proposal content except detailed budget information) in connections with the promotion of the research awards in all media now known or later developed.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Researchers\u00a0will be willing to engage with Microsoft about their project and experience, and provide\u00a0updates\u00a0via\u00a0monthly or\u00a0quarterly\u00a0calls, as well as attend\u00a0a\u00a0workshop at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington. The\u00a0workshop will likely be held in\u00a0the\u00a0summer\u00a0of 2021.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>The review process is an internal one and no\u00a0review\u00a0feedback will be given to submitters.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Microsoft encourages researchers to publish their work in scholarly venues such as journals and conferences.\u00a0Researchers must provide Microsoft a copy of any work prior to publication.\u202fSo long as accurate, such publications are not subject to Microsoft\u2019s approval except that, at Microsoft\u2019s request, researcher will delete any Microsoft Confidential Information identified or delay publication to enable Microsoft to file for appropriate intellectual property (IP)\u00a0protection for any project IP disclosed in such work.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>All data sets and any new IP resulting from this effort will be made public and publicly available for any researcher, developer or interested party to access to help further the goals of this initiative in providing higher quality and better access to technology services that empowers people and organizations to be more productive.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Funded researchers must seek approval of their institution\u2019s review board for any work that involves human subjects.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>At the completion of the project, the funded researchers will be required to submit to Microsoft a white paper that describes what was learned from this project.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<h2>Geographic Availability<\/h2>\r\n*<strong>Surface Hub 2S<\/strong> will be available in the following countries. If you are applying from a country not included in this list, please do not include a request for Surface Hub 2S.\r\n\r\n[row][column class=\"m-col-8-24\"]\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Australia<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Austria<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Belgium<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Bulgaria<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Canada<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Croatia<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Czech Republic<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Denmark<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Estonia<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Finland<\/li>\r\n \t<li>France<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Germany<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Greece<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n[\/column] [column class=\"m-col-8-24\"]\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Hong Kong<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Hungary<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Ireland<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Italy<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Japan<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Latvia<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Lithuania<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Luxembourg<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Netherlands<\/li>\r\n \t<li>New Zealand<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Norway<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Poland<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n[\/column] [column class=\"m-col-8-24\"]\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Portugal<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Qatar<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Romania<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Singapore<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Slovakia<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Slovenia<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Spain<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Sweden<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Switzerland<\/li>\r\n \t<li>United Arab Emirates<\/li>\r\n \t<li>United Kingdom<\/li>\r\n \t<li>United States<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n[\/column][\/row]\r\n\r\n**<strong>HoloLens 2<\/strong>\u00a0will be available in the following countries. If you are applying from a country not included in this list, please do not include a request for HoloLens 2.\r\n\r\n[row][column class=\"m-col-8-24\"]\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Australia<\/li>\r\n \t<li>France<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Germany<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Ireland<\/li>\r\n \t<li>New Zealand<\/li>\r\n \t<li>United Kingdom<\/li>\r\n \t<li>United States<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n[\/column] [column class=\"m-col-8-24\"]\r\n[\/column] [column class=\"m-col-8-24\"]\r\n[\/column][\/row]\r\n\r\n***<strong>Kinect for Azure<\/strong>\u00a0will be available in the following countries. If you are applying from a country not included in this list, please do not include a request for Kinect\u00a0for Azure.\r\n\r\n[row][column class=\"m-col-8-24\"]\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>China<\/li>\r\n \t<li>United States<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n[\/column] [column class=\"m-col-8-24\"]\r\n[\/column] [column class=\"m-col-8-24\"]\r\n[\/column][\/row]"},{"id":1,"name":"Proposal Requirements","content":"<h2>Collaborative Research Proposal Requirements<\/h2>\r\nProposals must be written in English\u00a0and submitted through the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?post_type=msr-academic-program&amp;p=593278&amp;secret=7nyUjT#!application-form\">Application Form<\/a>. Proposals must be uploaded no later than 11:59 PM (Pacific Daylight Savings Time) on October 16, 2019. Questions should be sent to <a href=\"mailto:MPR_RFP@Microsoft.com\">MPR_RFP@Microsoft.com<\/a> and must be received by October 2 in order to allow adequate time for response.\r\n\r\nMicrosoft shall have no obligation to maintain the confidentiality of any submitted proposals. Therefore, proposals should not contain information that is confidential, restricted, or sensitive. Proposals will be evaluated by a panel of subject-matter experts chosen from Microsoft. Microsoft reserves the right to make the winning proposals publicly available, except those portions containing budgetary information.\r\n\r\n<strong>Length:<\/strong> The proposal should not be more than seven pages in length of Times New Roman 11-point font. Any documentation beyond that length will not be included as part of the proposal review.\r\n\r\nThe seven-page limit includes the cover page but the proposal can start on the cover page if additional space is needed. Scholarly references\/bibliography can be submitted in addition to the seven pages and will not count toward the seven-page limit.\r\n\r\n<strong>Cover page:<\/strong> The proposal should have a cover page that provides the following information:\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li><strong>Biographical information and contact information:<\/strong> This should include a\u00a0brief\u00a0description of any relevant prior research, publications, or other professional experience.\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Faculty with deep technical experience related to the research\u00a0areas\u00a0described above are encouraged to apply. Indicate estimated\u00a0level of effort\/amount of time each faculty member will spend on the project.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Post-doctoral researchers\u00a0and mid-\u00a0to late-stage PhD students with deep technical experience related to the research should be included in proposals. Indicate the estimated\u00a0level of effort\/amount of time each\u00a0post-doctoral researcher\u00a0and PhD student will spend on the project.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li><strong>Project proposal abstract:<\/strong> The abstract should contain the following:\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>A\u00a0nontechnical\u00a0description of the project that states the problem to be studied and explains the project\u2019s broader significance and importance.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>A technical description of the project that states the goals and scope of the research, and the methods and approaches to be used.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<strong>Proposal body:<\/strong>\u00a0 The proposal\u00a0body\u00a0should include the following information.\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li><strong>Project description:<\/strong>\u00a0Include what\u00a0set of questions\u00a0based on the identified research scenarios\u00a0above,\u00a0will be addressed\u00a0and how they\u00a0will\u00a0be addressed. Describe\u00a0how answering these questions\u00a0will\u00a0help advance\u00a0the state-of-the-art in\u00a0productivity research.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Approach:<\/strong>\u00a0Describe\u00a0the methodological and theoretical approach that the researchers will\u00a0use. Explain exactly how the researchers\u00a0will\u00a0go about answering the question.\u00a0Describe how the researchers will handle the legal and ethical challenges of doing work in this area.\u00a0This section should also describe how the university\u00a0MPR\u00a0team proposes to work with Microsoft counterparts (researchers and engineers) to ensure\u00a0an\u00a0effective and positive collaboration.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Resources:<\/strong> Proposals should specify if and how Microsoft technologies will be used, namely (1) APIs, (2) Specialty devices including Surface Hub 2*,\u00a0HoloLens 2**, Kinect for Azure***, (3) Data sets, etc. if applicable.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Expected results:<\/strong> Briefly describe what new knowledge is likely to be generated\u00a0as a result\u00a0of\u00a0this research,\u00a0why these results would be significant, and how this could benefit\u00a0information workers of tomorrow.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Related research: <\/strong>Briefly summarize related research, including references where appropriate.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Researcher roles:<\/strong> Describe the role of each researcher involved in the project and explain how their skills and knowledge enable them to address the proposed research.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>~12-18-month Timeline\/Workplan and Schedule:<\/strong>\u00a0Describe what milestones will be used to measure progress of the project during the year and when they\u00a0will\u00a0be completed.\u00a0If the project is part of a larger ongoing research program, estimate the time for completion of this project only.\u00a0It is expected that\u00a0the award\u00a0will be made on or after January 1, 2020. Project timelines should reflect starting times on or\u00a0shortly\u00a0after this date.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Use of funds:<\/strong> Provide a budget (in U.S. dollars) describing how the award will be used. The budget should be presented as a table with the total budget request clearly indicated.\u00a0Microsoft will consider requests for Azure credits necessary to conduct research. Value of Azure credits will not be considered a part of the budget request.\u00a0Azure requests should be\u00a0included in the budget table.<\/li>\r\n \t<li><strong>Other support:<\/strong> Include other contributions to this project (cash, goods, and services)\u00a0by your university or other sources, if any, but do not include the use of university\/organization facilities that are otherwise provided on an ongoing basis.\u00a0Describe other grants or funded research that may be leveraged to add value to this research effort.\u00a0<strong>Note:<\/strong>\u00a0authors of\u00a0the selected\u00a0proposal will be required to submit an original letter on their institution\u2019s letterhead, certifying the commitment of any additional or matching support described in the proposal.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>"},{"id":2,"name":"FAQ","content":"[accordion]\r\n[panel header=\"Can multiple universities submit a joint\/single proposal?\"]\r\nYes, multiple universities can submit a joint\/single proposal together. Please clearly indicate in the budget section how the budget, not to exceed $250,000 USD, will be shared.\r\n[\/panel]\r\n[panel header=\"If a proposal is submitted by more than one university, jointly, is it possible for Microsoft to pay each university directly or do we need to subcontract to each other?\"]\r\nYes, Microsoft will pay each university directly provided the budget clearly illustrates the amount to be paid to each university with a total not to exceed $250,000 USD.\r\n[\/panel]\r\n[panel header=\"Are there constraints on how many applications can come from one university\/department?\"]\r\nWhile we will accept multiple proposals from a single university, only one MPR unrestricted gift will be awarded to a single university. To optimize the chances of receiving an award, we encourage researchers from the same university to consider submitting a single, joint proposal (rather than multiple individual proposals) that benefits from their various skills and interests to create the strongest possible proposal.\r\n[\/panel]\r\n[panel header=\"How long can my proposed collaboration with Microsoft last?\"]\r\nProject timelines should be approximately 12-18 months. They should reflect the total time estimated to complete the research proposed.\r\n[\/panel]\r\n[panel header=\"Are proposals required to choose one of the research areas described in the RFP (Interaction and Sensing; Machine Learning and Machine Teaching; Attention and Engagement; Collaboration and Human Learning)?\"]\r\nYes, proposals must indicate which of the listed research areas will be investigated as part of the proposed research to be eligible for consideration.\r\n[\/panel]\r\n[panel header=\"Is it a requirement or advisable to have a Microsoft champion who supports our proposal?\"]\r\nIt would be considered a positive for the proposal to have a researcher in Microsoft who is supportive but we don\u2019t require it or expect it. If a researcher in Microsoft is interested in expressing support for your proposal, they should send an email of support to <a href=\"mailto:MPR_RFP@Microsoft.com\">MPR_RFP@Microsoft.com<\/a> with the university PI(s) on cc when the proposal is submitted.\r\n[\/panel]\r\n[panel header=\"Can proposal budget requests be less than $250,000 USD?\"]\r\nYes, proposal budget requests can be of any amount up to $250,000 USD.\r\n[\/panel]\r\n[panel header=\"Does the budget table specified in the Proposal Requirements section count toward the seven-page limit?\"]\r\nThe budget is part of the seven-page limit. Scholarly references\/bibliography can be submitted in addition to the seven pages and will not count toward the seven-page limit but all of the other required components will count toward the seven-page limit.\r\n[\/panel]\r\n[panel header=\"If we are to include a letter of support from our university, would this count towards the seven-page limit?\"]\r\nNo, letters of support will not count toward the seven-page limit.\r\n[\/panel]\r\n[panel header=\"Is it an issue if our cover page is more than one page if our proposal is still within the seven-page limit?\"]\r\nAs long as the full proposal doesn\u2019t exceed seven pages the rest of the section lengths are flexible.\r\n[\/panel]\r\n[panel header=\"Does the proposal need to include Microsoft technologies (APIs, specialty hardware, dataset, or SDKs), open data sets, or the productivity resources found in the Microsoft Researcher Tools Index and Microsoft Research Open Data Repository?\"]\r\nNo, proposals are not required to or expected to include these resources. They are merely referenced as optional resources.\r\n[\/panel]\r\n[panel header=\"What is the maximum number of specialty devices that can be requested?\"]\r\nApplicants should request a limited number of specialty devices (low single digits) that are critical to answering the research questions in the proposal.\r\n[\/panel]\r\n[panel header=\"The Selection Process and Criteria identifies \u201cEvidence of university support contributed in-kind to directly support and supplement the research efforts\u201d. Is Microsoft looking for cost-share commitments, and if so, is the cost-share considered mandatory or voluntary per the terms of the award?\"]\r\nWe would be looking for cost-share. This is not a mandatory requirement.\r\n[\/panel]\r\n[panel header=\"Will Microsoft consider indirect costs (since they are not allowed) evidence of university support?\"]\r\nWe would be looking for contributions that directly support the research efforts here so indirect-costs that cover items such as facilities and infrastructure would not count toward university support\/cost-share\/in-kind contribution.\r\n[\/panel]\r\n[panel header=\"Is there a percentage or dollar amount that is expected or required as evidence of university support?\"]\r\nSince this is not a requirement, there is no expected amount.\r\n[\/panel]\r\n[panel header=\"Is the money considered a 'gift'? Are there conditions put on the funds?\"]\r\nThe funds will be considered a gift that has no restrictions on how it is used.\r\n[\/panel]\r\n[panel header=\"Can the grant money can be used by the receiving institutions freely, e.g. to pay an expert postdoc affiliated to one of the participating universities, however, residing in a different country during the project?\"]\r\nThere are no restrictions on how the funds are used. We do request that how the funds will be used is clearly illustrated in the required budget portion of the proposal.\r\n[\/panel]\r\n[panel header=\"Can funds be used to cover costs for Master\u2019s students?\"]\r\nThere are no restrictions on how the funds are used. We do request that how the funds will be used is clearly illustrated in the required budget portion of the proposal.\r\n[\/panel]\r\n[panel header=\"Are overhead and indirect costs allowable in the budget?\"]\r\nThe proposal budget should reflect your university\u2019s policies toward receiving unrestricted gifts and should emphasize allocation of funds toward completing the research proposed.\r\n[\/panel]\r\n[panel header=\"Is it possible to budget for some of the PI's time as part of the Microsoft Productivity Research Award?\"]\r\nAs unrestricted gifts, it will be entirely up to the winners to decide how to spend the award to achieve the research goals in the proposal.\r\n[\/panel]\r\n[panel header=\"To further improve and facilitate our research it would be beneficial to use as many videos as possible. Would it be possible to access Microsoft's internal corpus of Skype conversations?\"]\r\nI\u2019m afraid we will not be able to provide access to any data that is not already publicly available.\r\n[\/panel]\r\n[panel header=\"Can the data and the results of the project be used for future research by the authors, as it is common in the context of commercial research grants?\"]\r\nYes, the results of this research are meant to be open and public for unrestricted use by future researchers and technologists.\r\n[\/panel]\r\n[panel header=\"We plan to have one mid-stage PhD student and three professors in the proposal. Is it advisable to have an additional professor, PhD student, or postdoc in our university MPR team?\"]\r\nYou are encouraged to assemble a team that is most likely to achieve the greatest results within the time and budget parameters required.\r\n[\/panel]\r\n[panel header=\"How implementation-centered should the planned research be? Is it also valuable for Microsoft to i) receive insights on how people work together using their current technology leading to implications for the design of their future tools or should be ii) more focus on creating tool prototypes, per se?\"]\r\nBoth of these scenarios are valuable. The results of this research will be open and public and so they are meant to drive future research and technology development. More insight on how people work together leading to implications for designs of future tools \u2013 though not designed just by Microsoft but others as well that are working in these topic areas would be of interest. However, if you feel you can develop breakthrough prototypes that also inform future research then that would also be interesting.\r\n[\/panel]\r\n[\/accordion]"},{"id":3,"name":"Recipients","content":"<h2>2019 Microsoft Productivity Research Collaboration Winners<\/h2>\r\n<div style=\"height: 10px\"><\/div>\r\n<img class=\"size-medium wp-image-630768 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/MPR2020_Mirjam-Augstein_Thomas-Neumayr_310x208-300x201.jpg\" alt=\"2020 Microsoft Productivity Research Collaboration winners: Mirjam Augstein and Thomas Neumayr\" width=\"300\" height=\"201\" \/>\r\n<h3>Mirjam Augstein and Thomas Neumayr<\/h3>\r\nUniversity of Applied Sciences Upper Austria\r\n\r\n<strong>Microsoft lead collaborator:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/people\/serintel\/\">Sean Rintel<\/a>\r\n<h3>Supporting Hybrid Collaboration for the Teams of Tomorrow<\/h3>\r\nTomorrow\u2019s information workers are increasingly employed in flexible work settings and oftentimes come upon situations where they engage in hybrid meetings and hybrid collaboration. Although such situations, with their dynamic interplay between co-located and remote collaborators, are increasingly supported by software and hardware tools, there are still significant research gaps related to the description and analysis of such settings (which would also allow for more targeted tool support). Thus, the full potential of existing tools such as the Microsoft Surface Hub with its software solutions for co-located (e.g., Shared Whiteboard) or remote (audio and video conferencing) collaboration in the collaborative settings of the future is not yet fully exploited and requires in-depth conceptual as well as technological research. The envisioned research endeavor includes 1) thorough grounding work on a descriptive framework for hybrid collaboration, a small part of which already exists and was published at ACM CSCW (receiving a best paper award) and 2) technical work on a software prototype for the support of hybrid meetings and in-depth (on-the-fly as well as post-hoc) analysis functionalities based on Microsoft hardware and software tools and APIs. To draw conclusions, we will conduct an extensive qualitative user study.\r\n<h3>Research engagement results<\/h3>\r\n<strong>Workstream 1:<\/strong> Establish models and frameworks that are capable of capturing the distinct nature of hybrid collaboration and meeting activities, building on the grant holders\u2019 prior <a href=\"https:\/\/dl.acm.org\/doi\/abs\/10.1145\/3274397\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Domino framework<\/a>. A systematic literature review was carried out together with colleagues from Aarhus University.\r\n\r\nAdditionally, territoriality, as an analytic lens often used to inform the design of collaborative systems, was investigated in a hybrid setting. Traditionally, most interactions in co-located settings happen inside one of Personal, Group, or Storage Territories. Data was collected from a range of collaboration groups and several novel aspects of communication channels and access, as well as visibility of certain hybrid territories have been found. These observations led to the definition of a list of 9 design implications.\r\n\r\n<strong>Outputs:<\/strong>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/what-was-hybrid-a-systematic-review-of-hybrid-collaboration-and-meetings-research\/\">What was Hybrid? A Systematic Review of Hybrid Collaboration and Meetings Research<\/a>: (Under review)<b>\u00a0<\/b><\/li>\r\n \t<li>Territoriality article: Under review<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<strong>Workstream 2:<\/strong> Partially automate the cumbersome analysis process of collaborative settings\u202f(including hybrid ones) and making it accessible to larger audiences. A prototype research pipeline was developed, using AI services to complement and reduce human coding efforts of observational data (e.g., audiovisual recordings and depth information). The resulting ACACIA prototype is capable of recognizing people, objects, and regions of interest, which can also be annotated in an editor. Furthermore, based on the insights gained during the research in the first workstream, to some extent, the closeness of collaboration can be extracted from these data. Future work will focus on further improving ACACIA and bridging the gap to the semi-automated extraction of coupling styles.\r\n\r\n<strong>Outputs:<\/strong>\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>ACACIA system article: Under review<\/li>\r\n \t<li>ACACIA system access: Open-source access currently being explored<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\nThe collaboration between MSR and the UAS will continue along the lines of further improving ACACIA and both sides would also like to make use of the opportunity to conduct user studies together in the grant holders\u2019 new 4-year project about Hybrid Collaboration Spaces (Austrian Science Fund P 34928 Standalone Project).\r\n\r\n<hr \/>\r\n\r\n<img class=\"size-full wp-image-630810 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/MPR2020_Margaret-Beier_150x208px.jpg\" alt=\"2020 Microsoft Productivity Research Winner: Margaret Beier\" width=\"150\" height=\"208\" \/>\r\n<h3>Margaret Beier<\/h3>\r\nRice University\r\n\r\n<strong>Microsoft lead collaborator:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/people\/marycz\/\">Mary Czerwinski<\/a>\r\n<h3>TeamDNA: Productivity-enhancing Tools for Diverse and Distributed Teams<\/h3>\r\nIn this project, we are inspired by the question: what are the fundamental elements that impact team productivity?, for example, what constitutes the \"DNA of team productivity?\" Due to the necessity and prevalence of teamwork in the workplace, cracking this code and building better teams has the potential to significantly improve workplace productivity and also the teamwork experience. As one would expect, the topic has been studied extensively, especially in Organizational Psychology. However, to date, most prior research has combined human observations with self-reported data, thereby resulting in high-level insights but not deployable systems. Thanks to advances in engineering and Microsoft platforms that enable the real-time tracking of team interactions, we have a unique and unprecedented opportunity to study and improve team processes.\r\n<h3>Research engagement results<\/h3>\r\nThis project focuses on developing <a href=\"https:\/\/teamdna.blogs.rice.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><i>TeamDNA<\/i><\/a>, an automated system that can measure and provide insight into complex and dynamic team processes. Grounded in psychological theory, and enabled by advances in engineering, TeamDNA aims to leverage audio-visual recordings of team meetings to understand key metrics related to individual participation, team dynamics, and the impact of diversity on both individual and team metrics. Results of this work can inform teamwork science and practices for developing more effective teams. The primary two research thrusts are detailed below.\r\n\r\n1) Develop novel methods to extract action sequences from interpersonal interactions.\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Chen, Xu (2021) TeamDNA: Automatic Measures of Effective Teamwork Processes from Unconstrained Team Meeting Recordings. Unpublished dissertation.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n2) Establish objective measures that correlate with meaningful psychological indicators of team dynamics, role emergence, performance, and satisfaction within teams.\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>O\u2019Bryan LR, Segarra S, Paoletti J, Zajac, S, Beier M, Sabharwal A, Wettergreen M, Salas E. (Under Review) Modeling Conversational Turn-taking for Insights into Unequal Patterns of Communication Within Multinational Teams.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>O\u2018Bryan LR, Oxendahl T, Beier M, Sabharwal A (2021) Communication and the Emergence of Collective Intelligence in Virtual Teams. Remote oral presentation at the <i>Association for Psychological Science Virtual Convention<\/i><\/li>\r\n \t<li>O\u2019Bryan, LR (2020) Approaching studies of collective intelligence in human teams from the perspective of animal swarm intelligence. Remote oral presentation at the <i>ACM Collective Intelligence Conference 2020<\/i><\/li>\r\n \t<li>O\u2019Bryan LR, Beier, M, Salas, E (2020) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2079-3200\/8\/1\/9\/htm\">How approaches to animal swarm intelligence can improve the study of collective intelligence in human teams<\/a>. <i>Journal of Intelligence<\/i>, 8(1), 9<\/li>\r\n \t<li>O\u2019Bryan LR, Cao J, Torres WJ, Sabharwal A, Beier ME (2019) Objective measurement of individual-level communication behaviors underlying interactions within diverse teams. Poster presentation at the <i>31<\/i><i>st<\/i><i> Association for Psychological Science Annual Convention<\/i>. Washington D.C.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\nFor more about this project, contact: <em>Margaret E. Beier<\/em>\r\n\r\n<hr \/>\r\n\r\n<img class=\"size-full wp-image-630762 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/MPR2020_Jim-Hollan_150x208.jpg\" alt=\"2020 Microsoft Productivity Research Collaboration winner: Jim Hollan \" width=\"150\" height=\"208\" \/>\r\n<h3>Jim Hollan<\/h3>\r\nUniversity of California \u2013 San Diego\r\n\r\n<strong>Microsoft lead collaborator:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/people\/nath\/\">Nathalie Riche<\/a>\r\n<h3>A Human-Centered Information Space<\/h3>\r\nFor far too long we have conceived of thinking as something that happens exclusively in the head. Thinking happens in the world as well as in the head. Thinking is a distributed, socially-situated activity that exploits the extraordinary facilities of language, media, and embodied interaction with the world. With computers becoming ubiquitous and intertwined with every sphere of life, today we increasingly think with computers. This is accelerated by a radically changing cost structure in which the cost to use a thousand computers for a second or day is not appreciably more than to use one computer for a thousand days or seconds. Yet with all the advances in capacity, speed, and connectivity, using computers too often remains difficult, awkward, and frustrating. Even after six decades of design evolution, there is little of the naturalness, spontaneity, and contextual sensitivity required for convivial interaction with information. We argue that this is a result of a legacy document and application-centered design paradigm that presupposes information is static and disconnected from the context of processes, tasks, and personal histories. We propose a new human-centered view of information: as dynamic entities whose representation and behavior are designed in accordance with the cognitive requirements of human activity.\r\n\r\n<hr \/>\r\n\r\n<img class=\"size-medium wp-image-630750 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/MPR2020_Chris-North_Doug-Bowman_310x208-300x201.jpg\" alt=\"2020 Microsoft Productivity Research Collaboration winners: Chris North and Doug Bowman\" width=\"300\" height=\"201\" \/>\r\n<h3>Chris North and Doug Bowman<\/h3>\r\nVirginia Tech\r\n\r\n<strong>Microsoft lead collaborators:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/people\/richst\/\">Rich Stoakley<\/a>, March Rogers\r\n<h3>Evaluating Physical and Virtual Large Displays for Windows Productivity Beyond the Desktop<\/h3>\r\nThe fundamental space limitations of small display monitors pose significant problems for information workers' productivity. The increased availability of low-cost, large physical displays and the coming feasibility of virtual displays (viewed through AR and VR headsets) will open fundamentally new user interface opportunities. However, little is known about the value of these modalities for desktop use, the trade-offs between physical and virtual displays, and how to best exploit them for productivity tasks. Our goal is to collect empirical data that will inform the design of future productivity hardware and software, such as Microsoft Windows and Office. These results could help to free users from the confines of current desktop environments and lead to the next major revolution in increased productivity.\r\n<h3>Research engagement results<\/h3>\r\nThe partnership with Virginia Tech explored how virtual monitors can be used to improve productivity through augmented reality. By looking at range scenarios \u2013 from mobile knowledge work to working from home to low vision contexts \u2013 the team found ways to expand beyond small screen and monitors that occupy physical space. These videos give an example of the immense flexibility virtual monitors can bring regardless of how much display space is needed:\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=bAjVqzxKGko&amp;list=PLrq-dp5o2lMNaHsdamUvlC-1nFiHIAUWI&amp;index=18\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Virtual Monitors - Virtual Condition<\/a><\/li>\r\n \t<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=h3qY-RNvvpQ&amp;list=PLrq-dp5o2lMNaHsdamUvlC-1nFiHIAUWI&amp;index=19\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Virtual Monitors - Hybrid Condition<\/a><\/li>\r\n \t<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=bB4PvN3ufSM&amp;list=PLrq-dp5o2lMNaHsdamUvlC-1nFiHIAUWI&amp;index=17\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Virtual Monitors - Containers Condition<\/a><\/li>\r\n \t<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ZmdaPHx3x6Y&amp;list=PLrq-dp5o2lMNaHsdamUvlC-1nFiHIAUWI&amp;index=20\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Virtual Monitors - Curved Canvas<\/a><\/li>\r\n \t<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ENP7dQKEKNI\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Do we still need physical monitors?<\/a> (presentation at IEEE VR 2021)<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n<hr \/>\r\n\r\n<img class=\"size-full wp-image-630759 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/MPR2020_Dragomir-Radev_150x208.jpg\" alt=\"2020 Microsoft Productivity Research Collaboration winner: Dragomir Radev\" width=\"150\" height=\"208\" \/>\r\n<h3>Dragomir Radev<\/h3>\r\nYale University\r\n\r\n<strong>Microsoft lead collaborator:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/people\/hassanam\/\">Ahmed Hassan Awadallah<\/a>\r\n<h3>Improving Employee Productivity Using Text Summarization<\/h3>\r\nCompany employees spend a large fraction of their time reading text documents such as company policies, technical manuals, patents, research papers, industry news articles, and email, among others. Reading text takes time that can be used for other work-related activities or for enjoying more leisure time. We are proposing to improve employee productivity, both during onboarding and throughout their entire careers, through automatic text summarization techniques. We will develop a generic, state of the art library, named SummerTime, that will be used on summarization tasks, such as single-document and multi-document summarization, query-based summarization, text simplification, and text re-targeting. The code base will be flexible enough to allow the introduction of new techniques, data sets, and evaluation metrics. We will also implement a number of classic and recent neural algorithms and also improve the state of the art using transfer learning and several novel neural architectures.\r\n<h3>Research engagement results<\/h3>\r\nThe project with Yale focused on improving productivity via dialogue summarization. Dialogue summarization has become increasingly important since the COVID-19 pandemic given the growth in video conferencing, and the team created and released a benchmark to measure how well current models perform in the dialogue domain.\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li><em>QMSum: A New Benchmark for Query-based Multi-domain Meeting Summarization <\/em>(NAACL 2021). Ming Zhong, Da Yin, Tao Yu, Ahmad Zaidi, Mutethia Mutuma, Rahul Jha, Ahmed Hassan Awadallah, Asli Celikyilmaz, Yang Liu, Xipeng Qiu, and Dragomir Radev. Accepted by NAACL 2021. [<a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/Yale-LILY\/QMSum\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">GitHub<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/underline.io\/events\/122\/sessions\/4285\/lecture\/19778-qmsum-a-new-benchmark-for-query-based-multi-domain-meeting-summarization\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">video<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/underline.io\/events\/122\/posters\/4291\/poster\/20774-qmsum-a-new-benchmark-for-query-based-multi-domain-meeting-summarization\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">poster<\/a>]<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\nThe team also developed state-of-the-art methods for dialog and long-form text summarization. Their results can enable meeting summarization models to help new employees\u2019 onboarding process or new student\u2019s learning process by providing a concise summary of meeting or class interactions.\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li><em>An Exploratory Study on Long Dialogue Summarization: What Works and What's Next<\/em> (EMNLP 2021). Yusen Zhang, Ansong Ni, Tao Yu, Rui Zhang, Chenguang Zhu, Budhaditya Deb, Asli Celikyilmaz, Ahmed Awadallah, and Dragomir Radev<\/li>\r\n \t<li><em>Summ^ N: A Multi-Stage Summarization Framework for Long Input Dialogues and Documents<\/em> (ACL 2022). Yusen Zhang, Ansong Ni, Ziming Mao, Chen Henry Wu, Chenguang Zhu, Budhaditya Deb, Ahmed Awadallah, Dragomir Radev, Rui Zhang<\/li>\r\n \t<li><em>DYLE: Dynamic Latent Extraction for Abstractive Long-Input Summarization<\/em> (ACL 2022). Ziming Mao, Chen Henry Wu, Ansong Ni, Yusen Zhang, Rui Zhang, Tao Yu, Budhaditya Deb, Chenguang Zhu, Ahmed Awadallah, Dragomir Radev<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\nThe team also developed a new, wide-coverage summarization library named SummerTime. SummerTime targets non-expert users to expand access for state-of-the-art summarization models to a wider range of people. Users of the library do not need an NLP background and functionality is provided to help identify the best model to use for a particular case, including visualization, automatic model selection, and automatic model assembly.\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li><em>SummerTime: Text Summarization Toolkit for Non-experts<\/em> (submitted to EMNLP 2021, Demo Track). Ansong Ni, Zhangir Azerbayev, Mutethia Mutuma, Troy Feng, Yusen Zhang, Tao Yu, Ahmed Awadallah, Dragomir Radev [<a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/Yale-LILY\/SummerTime\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">GitHub repository<\/a>]<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\nFor more about this project, contact: <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/people\/hassanam\/\">Ahmed H. Awadallah<\/a><\/em>\r\n\r\n<hr \/>\r\n\r\n<img class=\"size-full wp-image-630747 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/MPR2020_Akane-Sano_150x208.jpg\" alt=\"2020 Microsoft Productivity Research Collaboration winner: Akane Sano\" width=\"150\" height=\"208\" \/>\r\n<h3>Akane Sano<\/h3>\r\nRice University\r\n\r\n<strong>Microsoft lead collaborator:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/people\/marycz\/\">Mary Czerwinski<\/a>\r\n<h3>Unobtrusive Personalized Work Engagement Assistant<\/h3>\r\nWork engagement and workload\/task management are important aspects of achieving successful and productive everyday information work missions. However, work tasks\/schedules and strategies to promote work engagement and well-being could vary from person to person. It is hard to adapt one strategy to all workers. In this proposal, we examine the hypothesis that multi-modal ubiquitous sensors and AI technologies help design a personalized work engagement assistant to suggest personalized productivity management strategies and provide unobtrusive personalized feedback to enhance work engagement and well-being. The aim of the proposed work is to develop and validate an unobtrusive personalized closed-loop system to measure work engagement and workload and provide personalized real-time feedback including work engagement management assistant and subtle sensory feedback based on the user\u2019s physiological and behavioral data. We are focused on the development of unobtrusive and practical technologies and selected the optimal sets of tools and mechanisms based on our team\u2019s interdisciplinary work: ubiquitous and effective sensing and computing, computational imagining, machine learning, organizational psychology, and human-computer interaction.\r\n<h3>Research engagement results<\/h3>\r\nThe team has developed study protocols to study workers remotely during covid-19 and\u202fconducted multiple cohort studies for different types of workers in different locations such as IT workers in the office and at home, hospital shift workers, and caregivers.\r\n\r\nThe team\u202fquantified people\u2019s behavioral and physiological patterns and analyzed the relationships among work patterns, digital device usage, behavioral features such as sleep and mobility patterns, and work productivity, and health\u202fand wellbeing outcomes (e.g. mental health, engagement, burnout). Prediction models were developed to infer productivity and health\/wellbeing outcomes.\u202fThe team also implemented and tested the system to run the inference models on the\u202fcloud and tested the efficacy of interventions.\r\n\r\nYusuke Nishimura, Tahera Hossain, Akane Sano, Shota Isomura, Yutaka Arakawa, Sozo Inoue, \"<a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Nishimura_abc_2021.pdf\">Toward the Analysis of Office Workers\u2019 Mental Indicators Based on Wearable, Work Activity, and Weather Data<\/a>\", International Conference on Activity and Behavior Computing (ABC), 2021, [<a href=\"https:\/\/nam06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdrive.google.com%2Ffile%2Fd%2F1hPlfe2FMvdBcN95egkzpuhRPPpLw_Gcy%2Fview%3Fusp%3Dsharing&amp;data=04%7C01%7Croyz%40microsoft.com%7Cf96529b54fea496785ac08d9afa7e7f1%7C72f988bf86f141af91ab2d7cd011db47%7C1%7C0%7C637733957970314116%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&amp;sdata=Q5hlrKq4cPRmbsMIwGDAo5QIwgD9i%2Buh31f8DFFpYh4%3D&amp;reserved=0\">pdf<\/a>] (Best Paper Award)\r\n\r\n<hr \/>\r\n\r\n<img class=\"size-full wp-image-630753 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/MPR2020_Cyrus-Shahabi_150x208.jpg\" alt=\"2020 Microsoft Productivity Research Collaboration winner: Cyrus Shahabi\" width=\"150\" height=\"208\" \/>\r\n<h3>Cyrus Shahabi<\/h3>\r\nUniversity of Southern California\r\n\r\n<strong>Microsoft lead collaborator:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/people\/jckrumm\/\">John Krumm<\/a>\r\n<h3>Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning Techniques for Improving Individual and Organizational Productivity<\/h3>\r\nStudying patterns of human activity (e.g., moving behaviors, daily routines, organizational workflows) can significantly improve productivity. Neural networks are a powerful tool to capture such patterns, but they need large amounts of individual data (e.g., location data) to train on, which raises significant privacy concerns. This project will design and implement differentially-private techniques to train neural networks. We will focus on skip-grams, which are suitable for sparse data, especially when used in conjunction with negative sampling. We will design algorithms that can build accurate models for human activity patterns, even under strict privacy constraints. We will also study privacy budget allocation strategies across different stages of the model, and we will perform tuning of model hyper-parameters to improve accuracy and performance.\r\n<h3>Research engagement results<\/h3>\r\nThe collaboration with USC consisted of three different workstreams.\r\n\r\nThe first effort created:\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>A density-aware technique for publication of OD matrices in a differentially private way,<\/li>\r\n \t<li>An extension of the OD concept to multiple dimensions that allows one to quantify privately the frequency of certain trajectory segments of interest, and<\/li>\r\n \t<li>An ML-based technique for accurately answering differentially private range count queries on geospatial data. All techniques were extensively tested using large-scale real datasets and significantly outperformed all existing state-of-the-art approaches.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\nThe second parallel effort identified a new problem of quantifying the intrinsic value of information of trajectories, including a technique for quantifying the intrinsic VOI of trajectories:\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Sina Shaham, Gabriel Ghinita, Cyrus Shahabi. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=VPsgtsH69gs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Enhancing the Performance of Spatial Queries on Encrypted Data Through Graph Embedding<\/a> (presentation at DBSEC 2020).<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Sina Shaham, Gabriel Ghinita, Cyrus Shahabi. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=rb1_wJC-JZE\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">An Efficient and Secure Location-based Alert Protocol using Searchable Encryption and Huffman Codes<\/a> (presentation at EDBT 2021).<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Sepanta Zeighami, Gabriel Ghinita, Cyrus Shahabi. <a href=\"https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1vHtvY6PBG_dJN4E_tdkfqSGI785_j1SZ\/view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Secure Dynamic Skyline Queries Using Result Materialization<\/a> (presentation at ICDE 2021).<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\nThe third effort worked on evaluating a methodology for different diseases and transmission models and quantifying the impact of sampling bias. The team considered the spread of SARS and the flu, in addition to work on COVID-19. Results showed the robustness of the method to bias in observed trajectories.\r\n\r\nFor more about this project, contact: <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/people\/jckrumm\/\">John Krumm<\/a><\/em>"}],"msr_impact_theme":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-academic-program\/593278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-academic-program"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/msr-academic-program"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-academic-program\/593278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":945501,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-academic-program\/593278\/revisions\/945501"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/594688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"msr-opportunity-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-opportunity-type?post=593278"},{"taxonomy":"msr-region","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-region?post=593278"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=593278"},{"taxonomy":"msr-program-audience","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-program-audience?post=593278"},{"taxonomy":"msr-post-option","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-post-option?post=593278"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=593278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}