They come from all over the world.

They choose their summer destination for a variety of reasons.

They are numerous, and they are among the best and brightest minds academia has to offer.

They are Microsoft Research interns, and with university life on a summer break, they are out in droves, having left their collegiate campuses behind to sample a taste of life in the corporate world and to pursue their particular research passions.

This summer, Microsoft Research is hosting no fewer than 850 interns at its five labs worldwide. They are welcomed with open arms by new colleagues who find the interns’ presence refreshing.

Microsoft Research hosts facilities in Silicon Valley, England, India, and China, in addition to Redmond, but while the locales might be far-flung, each shares one key attribute: The excitement level of each lab rises during intern season, in direct proportion to the youth and the vitality the newcomers bring to their newly assigned projects.

While that energy might be an intern constant, the motivations that inspire it and the directions in which it is being harnessed are as unique as the individuals themselves. A few examples:

NITIN AGRAWAL

• Hometown: Lucknow, India
• School: University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Internship: Microsoft Research Silicon Valley, June 4-Aug. 24

When Agrawal got a chance to return for a second internship at Microsoft Research, he wasted no time in snapping it up.

“I worked at Microsoft Research two summers ago, back at the Redmond lab,” he says, “and had a very fun and productive summer. When this opportunity arose to work in the Silicon Valley lab, I was very keen to go back. I like the publication-oriented mind-set and quality of work. Those were important factors.”

Nitin Agrawal

As was geography, it appears.

“An added perk,” Agrawal says, “is being located in the Bay Area. Nothing beats this combination.”

And then there’s the research itself. Agrawal is spending his summer improving the performance of Flash-based, solid-state devices, “along with my mentor, Ted Wobber; Andrew Birrell; and Chuck Thacker.”

“Flash-based disks are very popular in the home-user environment, but their full potential has not yet been explored in the server environment,” Agrawal says. “I have been working on improving the performance of these devices for I/O-intensive workloads. The challenge is to overcome hardware constraints of the Flash media by designing better algorithms and mappings for the Flash controller.”

If it sounds like he has his hands full, you might be right, but that certainly has its advantages.

“Internships at Microsoft Research are a lot of work,” Agrawal confirms, “but, at the same time, very exciting and challenging. It is more like an extension of graduate school, because the project is open-ended and involves a fair amount of thinking and design before you actually get to the point of writing code.

“I get to learn a lot from the people who work full-time here,” he adds. “Some of them are legends in the field, and nearly all of them are accomplished researchers. I am often humbled by their modesty and willingness to help and discuss.”

MALCOLM HALL

• Hometown: Glasgow, Scotland
• School: University of Glasgow
• Internship: Microsoft Research Cambridge, July 4-Aug. 24

Hall was interested in learning about how corporate research differs from academia, but really, it was the fun factor that persuaded him that Microsoft Research Cambridge was where he wanted to pursue his internship.

“I had met the members of the Computer-Mediated Living group at various conferences, visits, and social events,” he relates, “and they are all very friendly, fun people.

Malcolm Hall

“A friend of mine from the University of Glasgow, Barry Brown, recommended me to my host-to-be, Shahram Izadi, while he was a visiting researcher here, because it appeared the group has similar research interests and I would fit in well.”

He also wanted to see how things worked in the corporate-research world.

“This is my first experience working in an industrial research lab,” Hall says, “so I wanted to learn firsthand the difference from academia.”

One of the things he has been able to discern is that industry in general and Microsoft Research in particular can offer some amazingly compelling challenges.

“I’ve been working on multitouch-interaction techniques and technologies to support using mobile phones and large displays together,” he says, “and developed some really cool applications. It’s been very exciting to work on applications for Microsoft’s newest product, Surface.”

Oddly, he also has received a bit of a research nudge from the weatherman.

“It’s been wet here,” Hall recalls ruefully, “the rainiest summer in the U.K. for years. That, however, is perfect weather for getting lots of work done in the lab.”

And it’s been in the lab that he has cultivated a few burgeoning friendships.

“The social aspect of working here has been great,” he says. “I’ve met some friendly and like-minded interns, including Yuvraj Agarwal and Jurgen Van Gael. We spend most nights discussing our ideas in the Wolfson College bar. We’ve had friends visiting on the weekends and been punting on the canal—Cambridge’s most popular tourist activity—and had some amazing nights out.

“Overall,” Hall concludes, “the experience has been very worthwhile. Microsoft Research is definitely somewhere I would like to work in the future.”

MIZUKI OKA

• Hometown: Tsukuba, Japan
• School: University of Tsukuba
• Internship: Microsoft Research Asia, April 2-Sept. 28

Oka was intrigued by the opportunity offered by an internship with Microsoft Research, and the experience has turned out to be better than she ever imagined.

“The internship with Microsoft Research was appealing,” she says, “because it offers a unique opportunity to work in an internationally competitive research environment, while, at the same time, staying connected to the real-world needs of a private company and end users.

Mizuki Oka

“As such,” she adds, “the internship has delivered on all its promises and more.”

Oka was happy to find internship projects that resonated with her, working on, among other things, computer authentication using graphical passwords.

Oh, and there was one moment she found particularly memorable.

“I got a chance to visit Redmond,” she enthuses, “and attend a gathering with Bill Gates.”

Perks aside, for Oka, it has been an enlightening experience.

“The internship has been an exciting insight,” she says, “into the research wing of the largest software company in the world.”

And one of the most interesting aspects has been the competition to succeed amid an environment of friendly, supportive colleagues.

“The desire to outperform and innovate has been highly contagious,” Oka affirms, “and every senior Microsoft employee has been forthcoming and helpful beyond what I could have expected.”

DANIELA CALDERON PUCCI

• Hometown: San José, Costa Rica
• School: Latin AmericanUniversity of Science and Technology; Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
• Internship: Microsoft Research Redmond, Feb. 5-July 20

Oddly enough, Calderon didn’t choose to become an intern at Microsoft Research.

“I guess destiny chose it for me,” she says. “I was working on my master’s degree in South Korea, and my team there was collaborating with my current team here, the Robotics Initiative team.

Daniela Calderon Pucci

“After I graduated, I left Korea,” Calderon adds, “and my actual Microsoft Research manager, Tandy Trower, went to Korea. There he saw what I did for my thesis project, and my adviser recommended me. He got into contact with me, and well, why say no to an incredible opportunity in one of the top research institutes in the world? So here I am!”

It appears that the match was mutually satisfactory. She helped deliver speech services and ubiquitous services to the Robotics Initiative team, and, in late April, her internship was supposed to end.

“But,” Calderon says, “due to the good work—or maybe they just like me—my internship was extended for another three months.”

“My code was shipped in two circumstances,” she states, “and I feel very proud of that. My manager even let me give a demo in front of a televised interview.”

With her internship having concluded, she looks back at the experience fondly.

“My team treated me very well,” Calderon says. “From the learning curve and adaptation in the beginning of the process until the time I was fully involved, I was part of a team that made me feel valuable and worthy.

“My experience was really fun, and I think, after this six months, I have grown into a better professional.”

ROBERT SIMMONS

• Hometown: Atlanta
• School: Carnegie Mellon University
• Internship: Microsoft Research India, July 11-Aug. 31

For Simmons, an intern opportunity in Bangalore was most alluring because of his research interests. Of course, having those interests satisfied amid India’s entrancing culture was a pleasant bonus.

“I was attracted to Microsoft Research in Bangalore first by the research going on there and only secondarily by the fact that it was in India,” Simmons says. “I think many of the other interns thought much more about the excitement of traveling to India than I did.”

Robert Simmons

Simmons was intrigued by Yogi, a software property-checking project being conducted by the lab’s Rigorous Software Engineering (RSE) group.

“I had worked for a year between undergraduate and graduate study at a nonprofit in Chicago, the Neighborhood Technology Resource Center,” he says. “I had very little experience with the non-academic world of computer science. This summer has turned out to be a good time to explore that environment.”

Working on Yogi provided grounding in the kind of results that can be achieved within Microsoft Research.

“It was a project that I thought I might have something to contribute to,” Simmons says. “It was a project that I thought had the potential to influence the future of program verification and testing, and it was a project that I expected to see concrete results from.

“While we have done work with the theoretical aspects of the project, most of the time spent by me and Nels Beckman, my friend and colleague from CMU who is also working on Yogi, has been doing implementation of the tool in F#.”

In pursuing that work, Simmons and Beckman have received valuable instruction and assistance.

“Sriram Rajamani and Aditya Nori, respectively, my supervisor and mentor, have been fantastic to work with here,” Simmons says. “My expectations have been more than met.

“In addition, as someone with more background in logic and programming languages and less in software engineering, I was extremely encouraged by the enthusiasm that the RSE group displayed toward considering different ways of approaching problems.”

And then there’s the India factor.

“Even though India was not a huge part of what drew me to Bangalore,” Simmons says, “it has been absolutely fantastic to be in India. I’ve been able to travel with other interns a great deal around [the state of] Karnataka, taking trips to Hampi and Mysore in the first couple of weeks we were here.

“The environment in the lab is great,” he enthuses, “and the leaders—from Aditya and Sriram to Kentaro [Toyama] and [P.] Anandan—are among the most brilliant and vision-driven people I have ever had the opportunity to work for.”