Microsoft Research Redmond

Overview
March 2008

Microsoft Research was founded on the Redmond, Wash., campus of Microsoft Corp. in 1991. The company declared that it would support research without regard to product cycles, so there would be new foundations and technology breakthroughs on which future generations could build. Rick Rashid, currently charged with oversight of Microsoft’s worldwide research labs, left Carnegie Mellon University to start Microsoft Research. From the outset, the organization has been based on an open academic model, in which world-class researchers collaborate with the worldwide research community through participation and attendance at conferences, acting on committees, and publishing papers for peer review.

Close proximity to the product teams at Microsoft proved valuable in the early days, and that remains true today. Over the past 16 years, the Redmond lab has ensured that researchers located in the company’s other labs around the world are just as connected to the product groups, through the creation of the Microsoft Research Program Management team. That team helps bridge the long-range research and near-term product development functions within the company. As a result, new ideas and opportunities born in Microsoft’s research labs are shared with the product teams that take the research and turn it into customer-ready features.

To this day, the Redmond lab has the greatest concentration of researchers, working across the greatest breadth of research areas in the company. Researchers in the Redmond lab focus on 15 areas of research, including new hardware designs and artificial intelligence, HIV vaccine development and the theoretical mathematical underpinnings of computer science. Several Redmond projects cover multiple disciplines and may be found in more than one category.

• Algorithms and theory. The Algorithms and Theory Group is working in several emerging fields within theoretical computer science: game theory and economics, which includes pricing algorithms and market equilibria; privacy in statistical databases; and quantum computing. The group also investigates algorithms and mathematics for the Internet, including Web search, social network analysis, spam fighting and Web security. Classical areas of interest include cryptology (foundations of cryptography and cryptanalysis), algebraic computation, random structures, and spectral methods for data analysis.
• Collaborative research. Microsoft Research collaborates with the world’s foremost researchers in academia, industry and government to move research in new directions across nearly every field of computer science, engineering and general science. Through global and regional initiatives, Microsoft aims to accelerate research and discovery, and ultimately help researchers and scientists address some of the toughest, most urgent societal and technological challenges.
• Data management and data mining. The Data Management, Exploration and Mining Group focuses on solving two key problems in information management: reducing the total cost of ownership of information management, and enabling flexible and rich modes of interaction with stored information, while recognizing the key role the Web plays in information delivery and publishing.
• eScience. The eScience research group is exploring ways to help solve the problem of capturing, organizing, analyzing and understanding data. Each of the sciences has a wealth of data, yet many scientists have poor tools to collect and cross-index it with literature and archives. The eScience research group is developing new data analysis and visualization algorithms, by organizing data in new ways, automating many tasks and building tools that streamline scientific workflows.
• Hardware devices. The research of the Hardware Devices Group focuses on developing devices that will connect users more intimately, naturally and efficiently with their computing environment. The group researches many types of devices, including large displays, wearable devices and micro-electromechanical systems. It collaborates with other groups to build the hardware that will support the next generation of software.
• Human-computer interaction and social computing. Research on human-computer interaction plays a central role across multiple teams at Microsoft Research. The work is focused on advancing the way users interact with computing devices. This includes search, access and information management; the display of complex data and information; user modeling and activity recognition; efficient input and interaction; the role of automation; and the coupling of intelligent systems with direct manipulation.
• Machine learning, adaptation and intelligence. The Machine Learning, Adaptation and Intelligence Group pursues research on automated reasoning, adaptation and the theories and applications of decision-making and learning. The research goals for the group include learning from data and data mining. By building software that automatically learns from data, the group designs applications that have new functions and flexibility. The group’s research focuses on using statistical methods for the development of more advanced and intelligent computer systems.
• Multimedia, image processing, graphics and vision. The Multimedia, Image Processing, Graphics and Vision Group focuses on new multimedia and graphic experiences that are made possible with the growth in computing power and storage. The group’s research focus spans the linear and interactive media spectrum across television, broadband and gaming. The group seeks to address the challenges involved in the high computational cost of producing, transmitting and displaying complex models by researching geometric compression and multi-resolution representations.
• Search, retrieval and knowledge management. The Search, Retrieval and Knowledge Management Group is pursuing research in information retrieval, filtering and management. Other work has explored the use of classification technologies and the development of systems that will enrich the user experience. The group looks primarily at Internet-scale searching and is trying to understand the ways in which information on that scale develops by working on the core technologies for providing the most relevant and freshest search results possible. In addition, the group looks at theoretical models for the Web, trying to abstract the properties of the Web graph that links pages together.
• Security and cryptography. The Security and Cryptography Group studies various aspects of security related to computer systems: the design of increasingly secure systems; the usability, evaluation and certification of security products; the robustness of digital watermarking algorithms; threat analysis for open networks; and database privacy. In addition, the group is concerned about security for mobile devices. To further technology in this area, the group researches new cryptographic applications; designs and analyzes cryptographic protocols, especially authentication; and provides internal consulting on Microsoft products. The group is particularly interested in working in the areas of system security, network security, cryptography, anti-virus, anti-spam and anti-spyware.
• Social computing. The Social Computing Group researches and develops software that contributes to compelling and effective social interactions, with a focus on user-centered design processes and rapid prototyping. The group’s projects include online sharing, mobile applications, trust, reputation and storytelling. The group is interested in exploring how people use computers to enhance their everyday experiences and designing interfaces and experiences to make human-to-human communication seamless and exciting.
• Software development. The Software Development Group’s research in software development spans all aspects of making developers more productive and software more trustworthy. It includes programming language design, compilers, software specification and verification, development environments and tools, runtime environments, formal models of software systems, software performance monitoring and optimization, and software quality improvement.
• Speech and natural language. The Speech and Natural Language Group designs and builds software that will analyze, understand and generate languages that humans use naturally, so that eventually users will be able to address their computer as though they were addressing another person. Areas of focus include speech signal processing, speech recognition, spoken language systems and natural language processing.
• Systems, architectures, mobility and networking. Computers now operate in a connected and often mobile world. The Systems, Architectures, Mobility and Networking Group’s research into operating systems, networks and distributed computing is focused on developing technologies that enable computers to operate more effectively in a networked environment, and that provide the infrastructure required to enable the deployment, operation, management and security of distributed applications.