AUSTIN, Texas — New research demonstrates that the six electric fish lineages, all of which evolved independently, used essentially the same genes and developmental and cellular pathways to make an electricity-generating organ for defense, predation, navigation and communication. (more…)
Human travel to Mars has long been the unachievable dangling carrot for space programs. Now, astronauts could be a step closer to our nearest planetary neighbor through a unique manipulation of nuclear fusion, the same energy that powers the sun and stars.
University of Washington researchers and scientists at a Redmond-based space-propulsion company are building components of a fusion-powered rocket aimed to clear many of the hurdles that block deep space travel, including long times in transit, exorbitant costs and health risks. (more…)
Twenty years ago, Calvin Hsia created a list of the “Most Verbose People” on a CompuServe forum that became Microsoft’s Most Valuable Professional program.
REDMOND, Wash. – It’s 1993, and you need technical support. Who you gonna call?
Most techies at the time would plug in their modems and dial up CompuServe. In the days before Twitter, Facebook and broadband, CompuServe’s forums were a gathering place for geeks to talk shop and get answers to burning questions. (more…)
For over 20 years, Microsoft Research’s labs around the world have focused on research across a broad spectrum of topics in computer science. From the start, the organization has invested heavily in pioneering breakthroughs in machine intelligence, including efforts in machine learning and big data. In this interview, Distinguished Scientist Eric Horvitz talks about advances he sees on the horizon, the influence they will have on your daily life, and how insights from big data and developing more intelligent software and services will change the world.
REDMOND, Wash. – Feb. 15, 2013 – At Microsoft Research labs around the world, some very deep thinkers are contemplating big data.
This includes Eric Horvitz, distinguished scientist at Microsoft and co-director of Microsoft Research’s Redmond lab, who was recently elected to the National Academy of Engineering for his work in “computational mechanisms for decision making under uncertainty and with bounded resources.” (more…)
Heading into the U.S. national finals, Microsoft’s signature technology competition has reached 1.25 million students worldwide over the past 10 years.
REDMOND, Wash. — April 20, 2012 — Across every industry — from healthcare to transportation and agriculture to infrastructure — the world has a never-ending need for inspired minds to find creative solutions that solve tough challenges. Yet it’s been estimated that 1 million science and engineering jobs will go unfilled in the U.S. alone over the next three to five years.
According to Mark Hindsbo, vice president of Microsoft’s U.S. Developer & Platform Evangelism Group, that’s why programs like the Imagine Cup are so important. Encouraging students to develop technology-based solutions for real-world issues, and inspiring them to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, has been the mission of Microsoft’s signature technology competition for the past decade. Hindsbo has been involved with the competition since its beginnings. Every year, he says, the judges are amazed by the contestants’ projects and enthusiasm. (more…)
*An encounter with 35 young girls in Kenya prompted Margo Day to start a secondary school there. The school will also be a refuge for girls who fled their homes to avoid the traditional practice of female genital mutilation.*
REDMOND, Wash. — When Margo Day went on a safari last year in Africa, she more or less knew what to expect. She had traveled in Kenya and Tanzania 16 years earlier, where she had what she calls a life-changing experience watching lions, elephants and wildebeests roam the plains. She returned to Kenya last fall to share that experience with her 19-year-old niece, Gail.
What Day didn’t expect was meeting 35 young girls who would change her life. But Day, who serves as West regional vice president of U.S. Small and Midmarket Solutions and Partners at Microsoft, had also wanted to do some philanthropic work on her trip. So she and her niece spent the last four days of their tripin remote northern Kenya with a team from World Vision, an international nonprofit that helps children, families and communities overcome poverty and injustice. The day before Day and her niece flew back to the U.S., they visited a primary school that also housed a rescue center run by World Vision. (more…)
*WikiBhasha tool will help simplify and speed up the process of creating multilingual content in Wikipedias.*
REDMOND, Wash. — Oct. 18, 2010 — Microsoft Research today announced the launch of the beta version of 
WikiBhasha, a multilingual content creation tool for Wikipedia. The WikiBhasha tool enables contributors to Wikipedia to find content from other Wikipedia articles, translate the content into other languages, and then either compose new articles or enhance existing articles in multilingual Wikipedias. (more…)
*After spending a summer working in Redmond, the junior class women of Brown University’s computer science department find new confidence.*
They can field their own baseball team, with nine women in all — a group small enough to fit around a large lunch table at The Commons, but large enough to make for vibrant conversation. But baseball isn’t what these nine women all have in common – it’s computer science.
