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Through our programs for India, External Research & Programs provides research grants, training assistance, conference support, and faculty development assistance. The goals of the India academic programs are the following:
- Support the research community by fostering
and growing research collaborations between Indian faculty and Microsoft
Research, helping connect with the international research community, and
collaborating on opportunities that are the most meaningful in the
Indian context.
- Help attract and retain students to the PhD
programs.
- Disseminate innovative curriculum.
We support the academic community through a variety of initiatives
and programs. For example, the Microsoft Research India Intern program and
PhD Fellowship programs, academic workshops that include the research community as well as relevant industry experts, and
request for
proposals (RFPs) for research funding in specific areas.
During recent years, there has been
growing recognition that the power of Information and Communication
Technology must be, and can be, extended beyond its traditional user
base to reach people who until now have not had access to such
technology. In particular, there have been numerous efforts in India and
other countries to make computing affordable and to bring it to
underserved communities, such as rural areas and low-income urban
environments. The impact that research projects can have in this
area is significant given that estimates of these populations fall
within 2 to 4 billion people worldwide.
In 2005, External Research opened the Information and Community
Technologies (ICT) for Underserved Community RFP specifically for India. The
proposal responses were quite impressive and
ranged from addressing the network infrastructure for rural communities,
designing compelling UI for illiterate users, novel use of sensor
networks for detection and warning of landslides, Telemedicine, and
optimization water use in agriculture. Support was awarded to the
following projects:
- S.
Gurunarayanan, Birla Institute of Technology and Science
Wireless sensor-based
water-resource management network for monitoring and control of
irrigation
- Balaji Parthasarathy, Indian Institute of Information Technology,
Bangalore
Ethnographic studies
of ICT4D projects in India
- N.
Balakrishnan, Indian Institute of Science
Deployment trials and
testing for PCtvt
- Uday Desai. Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay
Sensor networks for
landslide disaster detection
- Sanjiva Prasad. Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi
Wireless village
network for asynchronous communication
- Harish Karnick. Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur
Laptop-based system
for teleophthalmological diagnosis
- C.
Seva Ram Murthy, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras
Village ad hoc
wireless network for village connectivity
In January 2005, the
Microsoft Research India lab was opened in Bangalore. Microsoft Research India will engage in research in a variety of fields, including
multilingual systems, geographical information systems, sensor networks, software productivity, and technology for emerging markets.
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