Research manager Karin Strauss and members of the DNA Data Storage Project reflect on the path to developing a synthetic DNA–based system for archival data storage, including the recent open-source release of its most powerful algorithm for DNA error correction.
The efficient simulation of molecules has the potential to change how the world understands biological systems and designs new drugs and biomaterials. Tong Wang discusses AI2BMD, an AI-based system designed to simulate large biomolecules with speed and accuracy.
Researcher Siddharth Suri and professor David Holtz give a brief history of prompt engineering, discuss the debate behind their recent collaboration, and share what they found from studying how people’s approaches to prompting change as models advance.
Researchers Chris Hawblitzel and Jay Lorch share how progress in programming languages and verification approaches are bringing bug-free software within reach. Their work on the Rust verification tool Verus won the Distinguished Artifact Award at SOSP ’24.
In their 2024 SOSP paper, researchers explore a common—though often undertested—software system issue: retry bugs. Research manager Shan Lu and PhD candidate Bogdan Stoica share how they’re combining traditional program analysis and LLMs to address the challenge.
Undergrad Angela Busheska has a passion for sustainability. She talks with researcher Vaishnavi Ranganathan about the why behind her drive, the work she did at Microsoft on a platform for tracking land use, and her advice for making the internship experience count.
The personalizable object recognizer Find My Things was recently recognized for accessible design. Researcher Daniela Massiceti and software development engineer Martin Grayson talk about the research project’s origins and the tech advances making it possible.
College freshman Dexter Greene and Microsoft research manager Richard Black discuss how technology that stores data in glass is supporting students as they expand earlier efforts to communicate what it means to be human to extraterrestrials.
Model maker and fabricator Lex Story helps bring research to life through prototyping. He discusses his take on failure; the encouragement and advice that has supported his pursuit of art and science; and the sabbatical that might inspire his next career move.
Advanced AI may make it easier for bad actors to deceive others online. A multidisciplinary research team is exploring one solution: a credential that allows people to show they’re not bots without sharing identifying information. Shrey Jain and Zoë Hitzig explain.
Researcher Brendan Lucier and professor Mert Demirer are applying their micro- and macroeconomic expertise, respectively, to forecasting the economic impact of AI. They share how they’re using a task-level breakdown of occupations to help predict the future.
Emre Kiciman shares how some keen observations and a desire to have front-end impact led him to make the jump from systems and networking to computational social science and now causal analysis and large-scale AI—and how systems thinking still impacts his work.
