When the COVID-19 pandemic began the global science and research community quickly ramped up its efforts in society’s effort to understand, navigate, mitigate, and recover from its consequences. This included researchers, data scientists, engineers, and others across Microsoft coming together with colleagues around the world to contribute to our collective response and better prepare us for future pandemics. These efforts involved teams from across Microsoft Research, the AI for Good Lab, and Microsoft teams involved in research worldwide. Support was provided through many channels, including Microsoft’s Studies in Pandemic Preparedness and AI for Health programs.

The accelerated pace of discovery and innovation has led to many advances, from helping to unravel the structure of the SAR-CoV2 virus, to better understanding people’s hybrid work patterns, which are included here across six topic areas. The unprecedented research collaboration at a global scale helped to open up new ways of working that have set us up well for the future.

Adaptive Biotechnologies and Microsoft decode COVID-19 immune response

Adaptive Biotechnologies received FDA emergency use authorization in March 2021 for T-Detect™ COVID, the first clinical T cell-based test for patients to confirm recent or prior COVID-19 infection. This novel technology was a result of Microsoft’s AI and machine learning collaboration with Adaptive that is helping to decode the human immune system.

More on treatment and diagnostics

Understanding SARS-CoV-2

This research suggested answers to concerns such as how SARS-CoV-2 evolved from animals to humans, improving the potency of peptide vaccines, examining the role of T-cells in immunity, using T-cell receptor sequencing to predict disease severity, and simulating the mechanism by which the virus docks with the body’s receptors.

Treatment & diagnostics research

The development of diagnostics and treatments for COVID-19 has been critical in the global response to this pandemic. Researchers worldwide rapidly developed and applied tools such as machine learning and advanced data analytics to help with triaging COVID-19 cases, predicting outcomes cases, and estimating treatment effectiveness.

Infection prevention & control​

Using data to help understand, control, and prevent infection has played an essential role in public health responses worldwide. Researchers have used various data sources to assess the impact of public health interventions and recruit study participants, highlighting the feasibility of using online platforms to collect data on infectious diseases and trends in real-time.

Forecasting & modeling

Public health and policy decisions can be better informed using mathematical models and forecasting tools. Scientists and researchers used and developed a variety of techniques as the COVID-19 pandemic evolved to help improve response and recovery at local, regional, and global scales. The research here demonstrates innovative new methods for data modelling,  forecasting disease transmission, behaviors, risk factors, and illness.

Global response & information

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected nearly every aspect of life around the world, from healthcare and economics to diet and social needs. As a result, researchers have turned to a variety of methods to understand the impacts of the pandemic and inform policies and recovery efforts.

Work & well-being

This research looks at the effects of remote work on the personal productivity and well-being of employees, on cross-group collaboration, and work relationships, and explores social talk and remote collegiality in video conferencing.