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External Research & Programs
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Time |
Room |
Description |
8:00–9:00 |
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Continental Breakfast |
9:00–10:00 |
Kodiak |
Microsoft Research: An Overview of Projects
Daniel T. Ling, Corporate Vice
President, Microsoft Research
Steve Richardson, Microsoft
Research
Matt Uyttendaele, Microsoft
Research
Yi-Min Wang, Microsoft
Research
Alec Wolman, Microsoft
Research
Webcast:
Microsoft Research: An Overview of Projects |
10:00–1:00 |
McKinley |
DemoFest
DemoFest provides an opportunity for leading academic researcher to see
a sampling of exciting results from Microsoft Research. This unique
three-hour event also gives faculty a chance to talk one on one with the
Microsoft researchers and to see a few of the sponsored research
projects from the External Research & Programs group. |
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11:45–12:00 |
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Box Lunch Pickup |
12:00–1:00
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Lunch and Brown Bag Sessions |
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Rainier |
University and Industry Collaborations
Bryan Barnett, Microsoft Research
(Chair);
Ken Leppert, Microsoft Research
Microsoft engages with the academic research community in a number of
ways. This session will focus on the legal and other issues raised by
these partnerships and suggest guidelines for ensuring that they are
successful. There will be an open discussion about university-industry
engagements in general, and the presenters will answer questions about
engaging with Microsoft in particular.
Presentation:
University-Industry Collaborations
(Bryan Barnett, Ken Leppert)
Webcast:
University and Industry Collaborations |
|
v |
St.
Helens |
Gaming for Computer Science Instruction
John Nordlinger, Microsoft
Research (Chair); Andrew Phelps, Rochester Institute of Technology
John Nordlinger will be discussing the gaming in computer science
initiative and assets available and forthcoming for academics interested
in enhancing computer science. Andrew Phelps will then present one of those assets
created by RIT called MUPPETs (Multi-User Programming
Pedagogy for Enhancing Traditional Study), which supports C#, Java, DirectX,
and OpenGL in a pervasive visual virtual environment.
Presentation:
Gaming for Computer Science Instruction (Andrew Phelps)
White paper:
Computer Gaming to Enhance CS Curriculum
Webcast:
Gaming for Computer Science Instruction
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Baker |
High-Performance Computing with Windows
Dan Fay, Microsoft (Chair);
Marvin Theimer, Microsoft; Ryan
Waite, Microsoft
Microsoft recently launched its first product aimed specifically at the
high-performance computing market, namely the Windows Server 2003
Compute Cluster Solution. This product is designed to enable running
compute-intensive scientific and technical programs on Windows-based
compute clusters, with an emphasis on supporting personal and small
workgroup compute clusters. I will give a tour of the product’s
capabilities and will also discuss what kinds of things we are thinking
of adding to the next version of the product.
High-Performance Computing with Windows (Ryan Waite)
Webcast:
High-Performance Computing with Windows |
1:00–2:15 |
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Break-out Sessions |
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n |
Cascade |
Understanding Emerging Markets and Opportunities
Phillip Joe, Microsoft;
Daniel Makoski, Microsoft;
Melissa Pailthorp,
Microsoft; John SanGiovanni, Microsoft
Research (Chair); Hugh Teegan,
Microsoft
In recent years, emerging markets have become a major focus of technology engagement in research, commerce, and community outreach. This session will feature program managers from three separate teams
around Microsoft who have active projects focused on emerging markets and will provide some insights on the social and technical opportunities and considerations.
Presentations:
Inclusive Design
— Principles for Innovating in Emerging Markets (Phillip Joe)
Microsoft’s Community Investment — Citizenship
and Community Affairs (Melissa Pailthorp)
FonePlus (Hugh Teegan)
Webcast:
Understanding Emerging Markets and Opportunities |
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l |
Rainier |
Microsoft eScience
Simon Mercer, Microsoft Research
(Chair); Alex Szalay, The Johns Hopkins University;
Katalin Szlávecz, The Johns Hopkins University
eScience can be defined as the use of computing to
enable scientific understanding on a scale that would not otherwise be
possible. These projects demonstrate the breadth of impact computing is
having on scientific research.
Presentations:
Science in an Exponential World (Alexander Szalay)
Building an End-to-End System for Long-Term Soil Monitoring (Katalin Szlávecz)
Webcast:
Microsoft eScience
|
| £ |
St.
Helens |
Recent Progress on Sensor Networks and Embedded Computing
Stewart Tansley, Microsoft Research (Chair);
Feng Zhao, Microsoft Research
We have been investigating the problems of programming and managing
networked embedded systems such as wireless sensors and mobile devices
at Microsoft Research. In this talk, I will report on our progresses on
a number of projects, including the SONGS programming model based on the
specification and composition of light-weight services; the MSRSense
Toolkit, which is a set of tools for collecting, processing,
visualizing, and archiving sensor data and bridging the motes and
.NET/PC platforms; and SenseWeb, which provides an infrastructure and a
geo-centric Web interface for publishing and browsing live sensor data
streams, as well as our work on a low-power reconfigurable hardware
platform to support multi-radio real-time applications. For more
information about the Networked Embedded Computing group, visit the
Networked Embedded Computing Web site.
Recent Progress on Sensor Networks and Embedded Computing (Feng Zhao)
Webcast:
Recent Progress on Sensor Networks and Embedded Computing |
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p |
Baker |
Computing Research in Latin America
Marcelo Arenas, Universidad Catolica de Chile;
David Garza-Salazar, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico;
Jaime Puente, Microsoft Research
(Chair);
Clarisse Sieckenius de Souza, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
This session will provide an overview of the research agenda in
computer science in Latin America and the overall regional organization
and existing cooperation programs. Several interesting projects will be
discussed as examples of the success research stories in this emerging
region. The number of science and engineering articles credited to Latin
American organizational authors and published in the most recognized
influential scientific and technical journals almost tripled between
1988 and 2001. This growth rate was greater than that of emerging and
developing countries in other regions. The increase in the number of
Latin American articles was concentrated in four countries: Argentina,
Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. During this session specific research
projects from Brazil, Mexico, and Chile will be mentioned in addition to
an overall perspective of the computer science research agenda in the
region.
Presentations:
Computing Research in Latin America (Jaime Puente)
Databases: Some Research Opportunities
for Latin America (Marcelo Arenas)
Computer Science Research in Mexico (David Garza-Salazar)
HCI In Brazil: The Research and the People (Clarisse Sieckenius de Souza)
Webcast:
Computing Research in Latin America |
|
|
Hood |
Information Makers and Consuming Information
Max Chickering, Microsoft Live Labs; Elizabeth Lane Lawley, Rochester Institute Technology;
Evelyne Viegas, Microsoft Research (Chair)
Lawley’s talk on “The Social Side of Search” emphasizes a new internet culture. Most characterizations
of search activities frame it as a solitary activity — like reading or
writing. A single user types queries into the search box on their
personal computer. In fact, however, search is inherently informed by
the actions of other users. The ranking of search results is based
not only on the content of the page, but also on the extent to which that
page has been linked to by other users. And a growing number of
search-related application explicitly prioritize collaborative
information seeking behavior — examples include social bookmarking
services like del.icio.us, and social photo sharing applications like
Flickr. I will discuss the growing importance of social features in
search-related applications, as well as the tension between sharing and
privacy that can result from these features.
Chickering’s talk on “Learning Bayesian Networks
for Managing Inventory of Banner Advertisements” addresses
the challenges of bringing back to the user relevant ads. Many online
publishers sell space on their Web pages for placement of banner
advertisements. In addition, these publishers often give impression
“guarantees” — the publisher agrees to show each advertisement a minimum
number of times. Impression guarantees significantly complicate the
advertisement-delivery system because the system must manage inventory.
This talk describes how to manage inventory of banner advertisements.
The system allows advertisers to target both groups of pages (e.g.,
sports pages) and demographic information about the people browsing the
content (e.g., males from Seattle). The system uses Web-traffic data to
maintain a Bayesian-network model of the joint distribution over targetable attributes.
Presentations:
The Social Side of Search (Elizabeth Lane Lawley)
Learning Bayesian Networks for Managing Inventory of Display Advertisements (Max Chickering)
Webcast:
Information Makers and Consuming Information
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µ |
Sonora |
Hands-on: Exploring a Multi-Cultural Classroom and Supporting Large Tiled Displays
Patrick Bristow, Microsoft Research (Chair);
Brian Donnellan, National University of Ireland at Galway;
Patrick Mantey, University of California at Santa Cruz;
Gino Sorcinelli, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Professors Donnellan and Sorcinelli will model how they use ConferenceXP and Tablet PCs in their trans-Atlantic, virtual classroom. Session participants will take an active role in this process by using Tablet PCs to receive a
broadcast of the session’s content in OneNote. The combination of Tablet PCs with OneNote enables participants to annotate PowerPoint
slides with their comments by using the Tablet PC inking capability.
Professor Mantey will then present his work on an advanced multimedia lecture hall exploiting large tiled displays and student laptops, the software supporting their combined use, and the initial validation of this environment in enhancing learning and student-instructor interaction.
Presentation:
Multi-Cultural Collaboration and Virtual Product Development Teams (Brian Donnellan, Gino Sorcinelli)
Webcast:
Hands-on: Exploring a Multi-Cultural Classroom and Supporting Large
Tiled Displays
|
1:00–3:00 |
Kodiak |
Design Expo
The Design Expo is a Microsoft Research forum where the top graduate design institutions showcase their
prototype interaction design ideas. Microsoft Research sponsors a
semester long class at seven interdisciplinary leading design schools
and invites the top class projects to present their ideas as part of the
Faculty Summit. This year, we are inviting seven institutions with
established programs in interdisciplinary design and will be providing a
forum around the theme, “The Gigabit Connection: Opportunities and
Issues in a High-Bandwidth Ubiquitous Computing World” to showcase
exceptional design thinking about the future of computing and
interaction. Student teams will present innovative business ideas,
concept prototypes, visual and industrial designs, and supporting
research in their media based presentations around the theme of
high-bandwidth ubiquitous computing. This year’s schools include participants from New York University
Interactive Telecommunications Program, Rhode Island School of Design,
Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University, Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial (Brazil),
Technische Universiteit Delft (Netherlands), and National Institute of
Design (India).
Webcast: Design Expo |
2:15–2:30 |
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Break |
2:30–3:45 |
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Break-out Sessions |
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n |
Cascade |
Digital Inclusion Research: A Global Survey
Tom Healy, Microsoft Research
(Chair); Miguel Nussbaum,
Universidad Catolica de Chile; Henry Nyongesa, University of
Botswana; Roni Rosenfeld, Carnegie Mellon University;
John SanGiovanni,
Microsoft Research
In early 2006, Microsoft Research organized the Digital Inclusion RFP
program. The focus of this program was to explore applications for
mobile devices, wireless networking, and other emerging technologies for
applications in rural or underserved communities. Eighteen projects were
selected from ten different countries across a wide array of solutions
and research problems. This session will feature presentations from
three of the funded research teams, from the U.S., Chile, and Botswana.
After the session, join us to engage in an open audience-driven
discussion about these projects.
Presentations:
Digital Inclusion Research: A Global Survey (Tom Healy)
Bridging The Cognitive Divide And Transforming The Classroom Experience (Miguel Nussbaum)
Integrated Healthcare Information Services Through Mobiles (IHISM) (Henry Nyongesa)
Project HealthLine: Speech Interfaces for Healthcare Information Access in Underserved Communities (Roni Rosenfeld)
Webcast:
Digital Inclusion Research: A Global Survey |
|
l |
Rainier |
Modeling in the Life Sciences
Tanya Berger-Wolf, University of Illinois at Chicago;
Simon Mercer, Microsoft Research
(Chair); Andrew Phillips,
Microsoft Research; Sean Sedwards, University of Trento
The integration of computing with scientific research is catalyzing the
creation of new forms of science. The analysis and modeling of complex
biological systems has been identified by the 2020 Science Group as
a key challenge in the understanding of biology, and the codification of
biological concepts is a critical step in the development of formal
languages to enable direct computation with biological concepts.
Presentations:
Analysis of Dynamic Social Networks (Tanya Berger-Wolf)
Simulating Biological Systems in
the Stochastic p-Calculus (Andrew Phillips)
Modelling and Observing Biology (Sean Sedwards)
Webcast:
Modeling in the Life Sciences |
|
v |
St.
Helens |
Creating Games with the XNA Framework
John Nordlinger, Microsoft
Research (Chair); Mitch Walker, Microsoft
Come learn about how the XNA Framework will help you make great games. You’ll get an overview of the XNA Framework, where it fits in the XNA vision,
and a detailed look into the various pieces of the framework. We’ll have plenty of demos and get our hands dirty writing code!
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« |
Baker |
Windows CardSpace (Formerly InfoCard)
John
Spencer, Microsoft Research (Chair);
Steven R.
Woodward, Microsoft
Windows CardSpace (formerly InfoCard) is the name for an end-user experience Microsoft is creating in support of the Identity Metasystem. The Identity Metasystem is an industry-wide initiative to solve federated user authentication for both Web site and Web server authentication.
Webcast:
Windows CardSpace (Formerly InfoCard) |
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Hood |
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Going Wild and Live
Ken Church, Microsoft Research;
Evelyne Viegas, Microsoft
Research (Chair); Hugh Williams,
Microsoft
Williams’ talk focuses on “Windows Live Image Search.” Over the last
nine months, the Windows Live Search team has been developing an image
search engine for the live.com platform released as a beta on March 9,
2006. The most visible changes are in the user experience: we enable
users to see more images more easily, control thumbnail sizing, change
the image and metadata display, continue to view images in the click
through experience, and view the full-sized image in the context of the
source Web page. The interface changes were motivated almost completely
by the analysis of user data. In this talk, we explain our research into
how users interact with image search engines, some of our findings, and
the motivations behind our dramatically different user interface model.
We also overview our architecture and discuss the work that is yet to be
done, including improvements to relevance, adult filtering, result
filtering, and increasing collection size.
Next, Ken Church will give a talk on “Wild Thing Goes Mobile and Local.”
Typing is a pain, especially on a phone. Suppose you want to search for
“Condoleezza Rice,” but you don’t know how to spell her name. And even
if you did, you wouldn’t want to type that much, especially on a phone.
With the Wild Thing, the user types “c rice” or “2#7423” on the phone.
This pattern is short hand for the regular expression: /c.* rice.*/ or
/[abc] .*[pqrs][ghi][[acb][def].*/ on the phone. The system uses a
language model, based on MSN query logs, to find the k-best (that is,
most popular) expansions of the regular expression. To find hot stuff,
or your favorites, you shouldn’t have to type a lot, especially if we
know your location. The Wild Thing raises some interesting — and fun —
technical challenges for language modeling research. What is the
probability of all queries in all locations? MSN has lots of data, but
they haven’t seen every query in every location. How do we smooth
language models over geography?
Presentations:
Windows Live Image Search (Hugh Williams)
The Wild Thing Goes Mobile and Local (Kenneth Church)
Webcast:
Going Wild and Live |
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µ |
Sonora |
Hands-on: Engaging Students with Ubiquitous Presenter and WriteOn
Patrick Bristow, Microsoft Research (Chair);
Beth Simon, University of California at San Diego; Joe Tront,
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
In this talk, Beth Simon will explore uses of a Tablet PC–based system,
called Ubiquitous Presenter, to support active learning — even when students
don’t have Tablet PCs. She’ll also review interesting pedagogical uses by
instructors and report on student use of the system to engage in
the classroom and to review after class.
Next, Joe Tront will uncover WriteOn, a tool that is used to annotate dynamic demonstrations of screen
presentations in classroom and distance learning environments. With
WriteOn, the user can place a virtual transparency on the screen and
annotate screen activity as it occurs on the lower layer. Screen images
or movies can be saved for later review. Future broadcast capabilities
will allow students to receive the presenter’s
screen and personalize the notes on their tablets.
Presentation:
Using WriteOn to Engage Students (Joseph G. Tront)
Webcast:
Hands-on: Engaging Students with Ubiquitous Presenter and WriteOn
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3:45–4:00 |
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Break |
4:00–4:30 |
Kodiak |
Using Computer Science to Develop Very Large Operating Systems
Jim
Allchin, Co-President, Platforms & Services Division, Microsoft
The increasing complexity of developing and testing Windows, combined
with the rise in security attacks, have underscored the need for more
effective ways to find and prevent code deficiencies. Microsoft has used
computer science itself to re-engineer its software development process
by incorporating automated tools for project planning, visualizing
dependencies in the source code, enforcing “Quality Gates” to prevent
the creation of code deficiencies, and verification testing. This has
resulted in a dramatic improvement in the efficiency of the engineering
process and has raised the quality level of the code checked into the
Windows Operating System code base. |
4:30–5:00 |
Kodiak |
Microsoft Research Faculty Summit 2006: Final Thoughts and Next Steps
Sailesh Chutani, Microsoft
Research; Tom Healy, Microsoft Research;
Harold Javid, Microsoft Research
(Chair); Kevin Schofield, Microsoft Research
Presentation:
Final Thoughts and Next Steps (Tom Healy)
Webcast:
Microsoft Research Faculty Summit 2006: Final Thoughts and Next Steps |
5:15–7:00 |
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Dinner, Microsoft Visitor Center and Company Store |
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See the DemoFest booth descriptions |
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