{"id":698989,"date":"2020-10-19T11:34:10","date_gmt":"2020-10-19T18:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?post_type=msr-blog-post&#038;p=698989"},"modified":"2021-01-09T17:17:15","modified_gmt":"2021-01-10T01:17:15","slug":"podcast-evaluating-and-validating-research-that-aspires-to-societal-impact-in-real-world-scenarios-with-tanuja-ganu","status":"publish","type":"msr-blog-post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/articles\/podcast-evaluating-and-validating-research-that-aspires-to-societal-impact-in-real-world-scenarios-with-tanuja-ganu\/","title":{"rendered":"Podcast: Evaluating and validating research that aspires to societal impact in real world scenarios. With Tanuja Ganu"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-698995\" src=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2020\/10\/Tanuja-pc.png\" alt=\"a woman standing in front of a building\" width=\"1536\" height=\"864\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2020\/10\/Tanuja-pc.png 1536w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2020\/10\/Tanuja-pc-300x169.png 300w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2020\/10\/Tanuja-pc-1024x576.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2020\/10\/Tanuja-pc-768x432.png 768w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2020\/10\/Tanuja-pc-1066x600.png 1066w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2020\/10\/Tanuja-pc-655x368.png 655w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2020\/10\/Tanuja-pc-343x193.png 343w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2020\/10\/Tanuja-pc-640x360.png 640w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2020\/10\/Tanuja-pc-960x540.png 960w, https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2020\/10\/Tanuja-pc-1280x720.png 1280w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1536px) 100vw, 1536px\" \/><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.blubrry.com\/id\/69145704\/\" width=\"100%\" height=\"138px\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h3>Episode 006\u00a0|\u00a0October 20, 2020<\/h3>\n<p>At Microsoft Research India, research\u00a0focused on\u00a0societal impact\u00a0is typically a very interdisciplinary exercise that pulls together social scientists,\u00a0technology experts\u00a0and designers.\u00a0But how does one evaluate\u00a0or validate\u00a0the actual impact of research\u00a0in\u00a0the real world? Today, we\u00a0talk\u00a0to Tanuja Ganu who manages the\u00a0Societal Impact through Cloud and AI\u00a0(or SCAI)\u00a0group\u00a0in MSR India.\u00a0SCAI focuses on\u00a0deploying\u00a0research findings\u00a0at\u00a0scale in the real world to validate\u00a0them, often working with a wide variety of\u00a0collaborators\u00a0including\u00a0academia, social enterprises and startups.<\/p>\n<p>Tanuja is\u202fa Research SDE Manager at Microsoft Research, India. She is currently part of MSR\u2019s new center\u202ffor\u202fSocietal impact through\u202fCloud and\u202fArtificial\u202fIntelligence (SCAI).<\/p>\n<p>Prior to joining MSR, she was a Co-Founder and CTO of\u00a0DataGlen\u00a0Technologies, a B2B startup that focuses on AI for renewable energy and sustainability technologies. Prior to this, she has worked as\u00a0Research\u00a0Engineer at IBM Research, India.<\/p>\n<p>Tanuja has completed\u00a0MS\u00a0in Computer Science (Machine Learning) from\u00a0Indian\u00a0Institute of Science (IISc, Bangalore). She\u202fhas been recognized as MIT Technology Review\u2019s Innovator Under 35 (MIT TR 35) in 2014 and IEEE Bangalore Woman Technologist of the Year in 2018.\u202fHer work was covered by top technical media (IEEE Spectrum, MIT Technology Review, CISCO Women Rock IT TV series, IBM Research blog and Innovation 26X26: 26 innovations by 26 IBM women).<\/p>\n<p>Click\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/collaboration\/scai\/\">here<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>\u00a0to go to the SCAI website.<\/p>\n<h3>Related<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/lab\/microsoft-research-india\/articles\/\">Microsoft Research India Podcast: More podcasts from MSR India<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/feeds.blubrry.com\/feeds\/msrindiapodcast.xml\">iTunes<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>: Subscribe and listen to new podcasts on iTunes<\/li>\n<li><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/subscribeonandroid.com\/feeds.blubrry.com\/feeds\/msrindiapodcast.xml\">Android<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/feeds.blubrry.com\/feeds\/msrindiapodcast.xml\">RSS Feed<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/4z8l3ofB3tsL8i3JHxurkK\">Spotify<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.google.com\/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5ibHVicnJ5LmNvbS9mZWVkcy9tc3JpbmRpYXBvZGNhc3QueG1s\">Google Podcasts<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<li><a class=\"msr-external-link glyph-append glyph-append-open-in-new-tab glyph-append-xsmall\" href=\"https:\/\/subscribebyemail.com\/feeds.blubrry.com\/feeds\/msrindiapodcast.xml\">Email<span class=\"sr-only\"> (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Transcript<\/h3>\n<p>Tanuja Ganu: As the name suggests, SCAI, that is Societal Impact through Cloud and Artificial Intelligence, it is an incubation platform within MSR for us to ideate on such research ideas, work with our collaborators like academia, NGOs, social enterprises, startups, and to test or validate our hypothesis through very well defined real world deployments. At\u00a0SCAI, it&#8217;s\u00a0an interdisciplinary team of social scientists, computer scientists, software engineers, designers, and program managers from the lab who\u00a0come\u00a0together for creating, nurturing and evaluating our research ideas through real world deployments and validations.<\/p>\n<p>[Music]<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sridhar: Welcome to the Microsoft Research India podcast, where we explore cutting-edge research that\u2019s impacting technology and society. I\u2019m your host, Sridhar Vedantham.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>[Music]<\/p>\n<p><em>At Microsoft Research India, research focused on societal impact is typically a very interdisciplinary exercise that pulls together social scientists, technology experts and designers. But how does one evaluate or validate the actual impact of research in the real world? Today, we talk to Tanuja Ganu who manages the Societal Impact through Cloud and AI (or SCAI) group in MSR India. SCAI focuses on deploying research findings at scale in the real world to validate them, often working with a wide variety of collaborators including academia, social enterprises and startups.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Tanuja has been recognized as one of MIT Technology Review\u2019s Innovators Under 35 (MIT TR 35) in 2014 and by IEEE Bangalore as a Woman Technologist of the Year in 2018, and her work has been covered by top technical media.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>[Music]<\/p>\n<p><b>Sridhar\u00a0Vedantham<\/b><b>:\u00a0<\/b><b>Tanuja<\/b><b>, welcome\u00a0<\/b><b>to the podcast. I&#8217;m really looking forward to this\u00a0particular edition\u00a0of what we do here.\u00a0Becaus<\/b><b>e<\/b><b>,\u00a0I know that you manage\u00a0<\/b><b>SCAI\u00a0<\/b><b>and it&#8217;s quite an intriguing part of the lab.<\/b><b>\u00a0<\/b><b>Now before we get into that, tell us a little bit about yourself.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Tanuja Ganu:\u00a0First of all, thanks\u00a0Sridhar\u00a0for having me on the podcast today.\u00a0And uh, yes, uh, I&#8217;m not a\u00a0full-time\u00a0researcher, but I&#8217;m engineer by training and I have done my Master\u2019s in\u00a0Computer Science. Over\u00a0the last decade or so, my\u00a0work\u00a0is\u00a0primarily at the intersection of research and engineering, and it&#8217;s\u00a0on the\u00a0applied research side.\u00a0So\u00a0throughout my experience and journey, working at research labs and start up,\u00a0I&#8217;m very much interested in taking a research idea through the entire incubation phase to validate its applicability in\u00a0real world\u00a0problem settings.<\/p>\n<p><b>Sridhar\u00a0Vedantham<\/b><b>:\u00a0<\/b><b>So, Tanuja,\u00a0<\/b><b>I know you manage this thing called\u00a0<\/b><b>SCAI<\/b><b>\u00a0within the lab and I think it&#8217;s a very interesting part of the lab. Talk to us a little bit about that, and especially expand upon what\u00a0<\/b><b>SCAI-<\/b><b>\u00a0the term\u00a0<\/b><b>SCAI-<\/b><b>\u00a0itself stands for, because I myself keep tripping up on it whenever I try to explain it.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Tanuja Ganu:\u00a0Yes, Sridhar.\u00a0So\u00a0since the inception of our lab, the lab has been doing very interesting work in the\u00a0societal\u00a0impact space. Additionally, with the advances in artificial\u00a0intelligence\u00a0and\u00a0cloud-based\u00a0technologies in recent years there are increased opportunities to address some of these\u00a0societal\u00a0problems through technology and amplify its positive effect.\u00a0So as the name suggests,\u00a0SCAI,\u00a0that is\u00a0Societal\u00a0Impact\u00a0through\u00a0Cloud\u00a0and Artificial Intelligence, it is an incubation platform within MSR for us to\u00a0ideate\u00a0on such research ideas, work with our collaborators like academia, NGOs, social enterprises, startups, and to test or validate our hypothesis through very\u00a0well defined real world\u00a0deployments.\u00a0Also\u00a0our location in India allows us to witness and carefully analyze various socio-economic challenges.\u00a0So\u00a0the solutions that we ideate are inspired by Indian settings and in many cases equally applicable to different parts of the world.<\/p>\n<p><b>Sridhar\u00a0Vedantham<\/b><b>:\u00a0<\/b><b>Interesting, so it sounds like there&#8217;s a fair amount of difference between the kind of work that\u00a0<\/b><b>SCAI<\/b><b>\u00a0does and between what the rest of the lab\u00a0actually does\u00a0in terms of research.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Tanuja Ganu:\u00a0So\u00a0at\u00a0MSR India, where research work is mainly along three different axes, firstly advancing the state of the art in science and technology,\u00a0second is inspiring the direction for technology advances, and the third important\u00a0axis\u00a0is building the technology for driving societal impact.\u00a0So\u00a0SCAI\u00a0is primarily focused on social impact access and many of our projects also\u00a0do\u00a0have very strong academic and technological impact.\u00a0At\u00a0SCAI, it&#8217;s\u00a0an interdisciplinary team of social scientists, computer scientists, software engineers, designers, and program managers from the lab who\u00a0come\u00a0together for creating, nurturing and evaluating our research ideas through real world deployments and validations.\u00a0So\u00a0that&#8217;s really\u00a0the difference in terms of the other type of research that we do at\u00a0lab\u00a0and what we do at\u00a0SCAI.<\/p>\n<p><b>Sridhar\u00a0Vedantham<\/b><b>:\u00a0<\/b><b>So\u00a0when you decide to take up a project or accept it under the\u00a0<\/b><b>SCAI<\/b><b>\u00a0<\/b><b>umbrella, what do\u00a0<\/b><b>you\u00a0actually look\u00a0for?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Tanuja Ganu:\u00a0Yeah, we\u00a0look\u00a0for a few things for defining\u00a0a\u00a0SCAI\u00a0project. So\u00a0firstly,\u00a0it should address a significant\u00a0real-world\u00a0problem and should have a potential to scale.\u00a0The second thing is the problem should offer interesting research challenges for our team.\u00a0The next thing is whether we have credible partners or collaborators with domain expertise to deploy, evaluate and\u00a0validate of\u00a0our research.\u00a0We also look for how we can define rigorous impact evaluation plan for a project. And\u00a0lastly,\u00a0we look\u00a0for what are\u00a0the feasible graduation paths for the project within two to three years of time horizon.<\/p>\n<p><b>Sridhar\u00a0Vedantham<\/b><b>:\u00a0<\/b><b>What do you mean by graduation?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Tanuja Ganu:\u00a0So, um, there are different ways in which a particular project can complete its successful execution at\u00a0SCAI\u00a0center, and that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re really terming it as a graduation. And there could be\u00a0really different\u00a0types of graduation\u00a0path\u00a0depending upon each type of project.<\/p>\n<p><b>Sridhar\u00a0Vedantham<\/b><b>:\u00a0<\/b><b>OK, let&#8217;s talk a little bit about some of the projects that you are currently doing under the\u00a0<\/b><b>SCAI<\/b><b>\u00a0<\/b><b>umbrella<\/b><b>.<\/b><b>\u00a0<\/b><b>Becaus<\/b><b>e<\/b><b>\u00a0to me from what you&#8217;ve said so far, it sounds like there&#8217;s probably going to be a\u00a0fairly wide<\/b><b>\u00a0<\/b><b>spread of types of projects, and quite a large variety\u00a0in\u00a0the type of things that you&#8217;re doing there.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Tanuja Ganu:\u00a0So yes, Sridhar,\u00a0that&#8217;s very true. We are working on a very diverse set of projects right now.\u00a0And, um, so to give a flavor of our work,\u00a0I would\u00a0discuss about\u00a0two or three\u00a0projects briefly.\u00a0The first project is called\u00a0HAMS\u00a0that is\u00a0Harnessing Automobiles for Safety.\u00a0We all know that\u00a0road\u00a0safety is\u00a0very\u00a0critical issue and according to\u00a0World\u00a0Bank Report globally there are 1.25 million\u00a0road\u00a0traffic deaths every year.\u00a0In India there is one death every 4 minutes. That\u00a0happens\u00a0due to\u00a0road\u00a0accidents.\u00a0So,\u00a0to understand and address this very critical issue\u00a0of road safety,\u00a0HAMS\u00a0project was initiated by our team at MSR, including Venkat\u00a0Padmanabhan,\u00a0Akshay Nambi\u00a0and Satish Sangameswaran.\u00a0HAMS\u00a0provides\u00a0a\u00a0low cost\u00a0solution which is being evaluated for automated driver\u00a0license testing.\u00a0HAMS\u00a0includes\u00a0a smartphone with its associated sensors like camera, accelerometer,\u00a0etc\u00a0that is fitted inside a car. It monitors a driver and the driving environment and using AI\u00a0and\u00a0edge intelligence, it\u00a0provides effective feedback on\u00a0the safe\u00a0driving practices.\u00a0So\u00a0at present,\u00a0HAMS\u00a0has been deployed at regional transport office in Dehradun, India for conducting dozens of driver license tests a day,\u00a0and the feedback from this deployment is very encouraging,\u00a0since it provides transparency and objectivity to the overall license\u00a0testing\u00a0and evaluation process.\u00a0The\u00a0second\u00a0project is in the domain of natural language processing, called Interactive Neural Machine Translation, which was initiated by\u00a0Kalika Bali\u00a0and\u00a0Monojit Choudhury\u00a0in our NLP team.\u00a0So,\u00a0when we look at this problem, there are 7000 plus spoken languages worldwide, and for many\u00a0many\u00a0use cases, we often need to translate content from one language to another.\u00a0Though there are many commercial machine translation tools available today, those are applicable to a very small subset of languages, say 100, which have sufficiently large digital datasets available to train machine learning models.\u00a0So\u00a0to aid human translation process as well\u00a0as for creating digital data set for many low resource or underserved languages, we combine innovations from deep learning and human computer interactions and bring\u00a0human\u00a0in\u00a0the\u00a0loop.\u00a0So\u00a0when we talk about\u00a0INMT, the initial translation model is bootstrapped using\u00a0small\u00a0data set that is available for these languages. And then INMT\u00a0provides quick suggestions for human translators while they are performing translations.\u00a0And over\u00a0time it also helps in creating larger digital datasets which would help in increasing accuracy of translation for such underserved languages.\u00a0So\u00a0in\u00a0INMT\u00a0we&#8217;re currently working with three external collaborators called Pratham Books, Translators Without Borders and\u00a0CGNet\u00a0Swara\u00a0to\u00a0evaluate and enhance INMT.\u00a0So just to give\u00a0few\u00a0examples, Pratham Books is\u00a0a nonprofit publisher who would like to translate children story books\u00a0in\u00a0as many languages as possible.\u00a0Translators Without Borders is a nonprofit who is working in the areas of crisis relief, health and education, and they would like to evaluate\u00a0IN&MT for an Ethiopian language called\u00a0Tigrinya.\u00a0Our\u00a0other\u00a0collaborator\u00a0CGNet\u00a0Swara\u00a0is working with\u00a0INMT\u00a0for\u00a0collecting\u00a0Hindi Gondi\u00a0data set.\u00a0And just to give you one last flavor of one more project\u2026<\/p>\n<p><b>Sridhar\u00a0Vedantham<\/b><b>:\u00a0<\/b><b>So\u00a0I&#8217;m sorry, sorry to interrupt, but I was curious, how do you\u00a0actually go\u00a0around selecting or identifying partners and collaborators for these projects?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Tanuja Ganu:\u00a0So when we started thinking about\u00a0SCAI\u00a0projects last year, we had initiated a call for proposals where we invited external partners and collaborators to submit various ideas that they do have and the process that they have in addressing some of the societal impact projects\u00a0and\u00a0we Interestingly received a huge pool of applications through this call for proposals we received more than 150 applications through that. And\u00a0through\u00a0careful\u00a0evaluation process, as\u00a0we discussed earlier, we finally selected a few projects to start under\u00a0SCAI\u00a0umbrella.<\/p>\n<p><b>Sridhar\u00a0Vedantham<\/b><b>:\u00a0<\/b><b>OK, so I&#8217;m sorry I interrupted<\/b><b>.<\/b><b>\u00a0<\/b><b>You\u00a0<\/b><b>wanted to<\/b><b>\u2026<\/b><b>you<\/b><b>\u00a0were<\/b><b>\u00a0speaking about another project.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Tanuja Ganu:\u00a0Yeah, so just to give one more flavor of the project that we are currently doing which is addressing another important issue of air pollution.\u00a0So\u00a0air pollution is another major concern worldwide, with an estimated 7 million deaths every year, and when we look\u00a0in\u00a0India, it&#8217;s\u00a0even\u00a0more serious problem since\u00a013 out of 20 most\u00a0polluted\u00a0cities in the world are in India.\u00a0So\u00a0to solve the air pollution problem, it is important to get correct monitoring of pollution levels, their timely and seasonal patterns in\u00a0more\u00a0granular manner,\u00a0that is,\u00a0from multiple locations inside the city. So apart from sophisticated and expensive air pollution monitoring stations feature already available, there are low-cost air pollution sensors which are being\u00a0deployed\u00a0for this purpose.\u00a0But the local sensors tend to drift or develop fault overtime and the entire monitoring and analytical insights are dependent on reliability and correctness of this IoT data.\u00a0So\u00a0taking these things into account, we are now evaluating our research project called\u00a0Dependable\u00a0IoT for these low-cost air pollution sensors.\u00a0Dependable IoT helps in automatically identifying and\u00a0validating\u00a0the drift or malfunction in the sensors and notifies for recalibration or replacement.\u00a0So currently we are working with a few startups in this space to evaluate dependable\u00a0IoT Technology and\u00a0as the project name such as this is not only limited to air pollution sensing, but this technology is applicable for many other use cases for IoT sensing-\u00a0in agriculture, food technology or in\u00a0healthcare.\u00a0So\u00a0I guess this gives you a view on some of the diverse projects that\u00a0now\u00a0we are\u00a0doing and working on at present in\u00a0SCAI.<\/p>\n<p><b>Sridhar\u00a0Vedantham<\/b><b>:\u00a0<\/b><b>Yeah, so this\u00a0<\/b><b>Dependable\u00a0<\/b><b>IoT thing sounds quite interesting. So correct me if I&#8217;m wrong, but<\/b><b>\u00a0essentially<\/b><b>, what we&#8217;re saying is that we&#8217;re trying to figure out ways in which we can ensure that the data that we&#8217;re receiving in order to extract information from it and make decisions<\/b><b>&#8211; we&#8217;re\u00a0<\/b><b>actually trying to figure out our trying to make sure that the data itself is solid.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Tanuja Ganu:\u00a0Absolutely.\u00a0That&#8217;s correct,\u00a0Sridhar, and it&#8217;s like monitoring the monitor, right?\u00a0So\u00a0while we&#8217;re doing the IoT monitoring and sensing, we need to make sure that the technology that we&#8217;re putting in place is being monitored and it&#8217;s giving us reliable and correct data.<\/p>\n<p><b>Sridhar\u00a0Vedantham<\/b><b>:\u00a0<\/b><b>Great.<\/b><b>\u00a0<\/b><b>Now what&#8217;s also coming across to me throughout this conversation is that<\/b><b>\u00a0given\u00a0<\/b><b>the variety of projects and the variety of collaborators that you&#8217;re looking at in\u00a0<\/b><b>SCAI<\/b><b>&#8211; would\u00a0<\/b><b>I be right in saying that the kind of people that you have in\u00a0<\/b><b>SCAI<\/b><b>\u00a0in addition to the researchers<\/b><b>,<\/b><b>\u00a0<\/b><b>obviously<\/b><b>\u00a0who are your internal collaborators<\/b><b>, the\u00a0<\/b><b>people who are part of\u00a0<\/b><b>SCAI<\/b><b>, are they a very diverse and varied set of people?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Tanuja Ganu:\u00a0Yes,\u00a0absolutely true, Sridhar. As we discussed earlier,\u00a0SCAI\u2019s\u00a0an interdisciplinary team that consists of social scientists, CS researchers, solid software engineers and designers.\u00a0And we also have a program called\u00a0SCAI\u00a0Fellows where\u00a0fresh under\u00a0graduates or the candidates who are already working in the industry can\u00a0join on\u00a0the specific\u00a0SCAI\u00a0project for a fixed time period and contribute towards the development of\u00a0SCAI\u00a0project. So particularly in\u00a0SCAI, in addition to all these technical\u00a0or\u00a0academic\u00a0skills,\u00a0we&#8217;re\u00a0also looking for people who have passion for societal impact and willingness to do the field work and deployment to scale a research idea.<\/p>\n<p><b>Sridhar\u00a0Vedantham<\/b><b>:\u00a0<\/b><b>OK, and you know<\/b><b>,<\/b><b>\u00a0you might at any point\u00a0of\u00a0time be working on say,\u00a0<\/b><b>four<\/b><b>, five or six projects.<\/b><b>\u00a0<\/b><b>Uh, what happens to these projects once they are completed?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Tanuja Ganu:\u00a0Yeah, so I would say each project would have a different graduation plan.\u00a0So\u00a0whenever a project is complete from the\u00a0SCAI\u00a0perspective, we call\u00a0it as\u00a0a graduation plan where we would define how this project would then sustainably grow further internally or externally.\u00a0And\u00a0this graduation plan would be different for different projects depending upon the nature of the project.\u00a0So\u00a0for some of the projects, the graduation plan could be an independent entity that is spun off to take the journey of the project forward by scaling the initial idea to more people, more geographies, or for more use cases.\u00a0A very good example of this type of graduation plan is\u00a0a\u00a0MSR project called 99\u00a0DOTS, where researchers like Bill Thies\u00a0and others at Microsoft Research started this project to address medical adherence for tuberculosis.\u00a0Over the years, this work has significantly grown and there is an independent entity spun\u00a0off called\u00a0Everwell\u00a0to take the 99\u00a0DOTS\u00a0journey forward. The other type of graduation plan can be putting up\u00a0a work\u00a0and technology in the open source wherein the external social enterprises, NGOs\u00a0or\u00a0our\u00a0collaborators can build on top of it\u00a0and\u00a0take the solution forward\u00a0at\u00a0larger scale.\u00a0The\u00a0example of this\u00a0is\u00a0our\u00a0work on interactive machine translation, where we have open sourced our initial work and various collaborators are now using, validating and building\u00a0on\u00a0top of this technology.<\/p>\n<p><b>Sridhar\u00a0<\/b><b>Vedantham<\/b><b>:\u00a0<\/b><b>OK, and does the work that you do in\u00a0<\/b><b>SCAI<\/b><b>\u00a0or say t<\/b><b>he validation that you&#8217;re looking for\u00a0<\/b><b>from research projects or the validation you&#8217;re looking at of research projects<\/b><b>\u00a0through\u00a0<\/b><b>SCAI<\/b><b>&#8211; does that<\/b><b>\u00a0<\/b><b>feed<\/b><b>\u00a0<\/b><b>back<\/b><b>\u00a0further into the research itself<\/b><b>,<\/b><b>\u00a0<\/b><b>or\u00a0<\/b><b>does\u00a0<\/b><b>it<\/b><b>\u00a0<\/b><b>kind of just stay at\u00a0<\/b><b>SCAI<\/b><b>?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Tanuja Ganu:\u00a0So, it has two or I would say it would have multiple pathways, but primarily the first thing is certainly the work that we&#8217;re doing is\u00a0validating\u00a0certain research hypothesis that we do have.\u00a0So\u00a0some of the output or outcome of these\u00a0SCAI\u00a0projects is feeding back into the research areas\u00a0and\u00a0validating\u00a0or invalidating the hypothesis to say how\u00a0the technology\u00a0is helping to solve a particular research problem or not. But\u00a0also\u00a0if the intervention is successful, it would be useful for external collaborators internally,\u00a0externally for them to take up this idea forward\u00a0and\u00a0utilize the technology that we have built at\u00a0SCAI\u00a0to\u00a0taking\u00a0it to\u00a0larger\u00a0scale.<\/p>\n<p><b>Sridhar\u00a0Vedantham<\/b><b>:\u00a0<\/b><b>OK, so once again coming back to the fact that the<\/b><b>\u00a0projects\u00a0<\/b><b>that you do are of such\u00a0different\u00a0nature<\/b><b>,\u00a0<\/b><b>how do you\u00a0actually even\u00a0define success metrics for\u00a0<\/b><b>SCAI<\/b><b>\u00a0projects?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Tanuja Ganu:\u00a0Yeah, this is\u00a0a\u00a0very interesting question, Sridhar.\u00a0So,\u00a0the whole purpose of\u00a0SCAI, as the name suggests, is\u00a0about\u00a0bringing\u00a0social impact through technology innovations.\u00a0So\u00a0there is no one fixed set of metrics that would be applicable for\u00a0each and every\u00a0project at\u00a0SCAI.\u00a0But our success metrics for these projects are geared towards\u00a0validating\u00a0whether technological interventions can support the people and ecosystem and\u00a0actually help\u00a0address a specific problem or not. And\u00a0if it does help solve the problem, then how can we amplify the positive effect\u00a0using\u00a0technology? So those are really the\u00a0metrics\u00a0that we&#8217;re defining on each of the\u00a0project\u00a0depending upon\u00a0nature\u00a0of the project.<\/p>\n<p><b>Sridhar\u00a0Vedantham<\/b><b>:\u00a0<\/b><b>So Tanuja, thank you so much for your time. This has been a great conversation and all the best\u00a0for\u00a0going\u00a0forward in\u00a0<\/b><b>SCAI<\/b><b>.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Tanuja Ganu:\u00a0Thank you,\u00a0Sridhar,\u00a0for having me here and I really enjoyed discussing these projects and ideas with you. Thank you.<\/p>\n<p>[Music Ends]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At Microsoft Research India, research\u00a0focused on\u00a0societal impact\u00a0is typically a very interdisciplinary exercise that pulls together social scientists,\u00a0technology experts\u00a0and designers.\u00a0But how does one evaluate\u00a0or validate\u00a0the actual impact of research\u00a0in\u00a0the real world? Today, we\u00a0talk\u00a0to Tanuja Ganu who manages the\u00a0Societal Impact through Cloud and AI\u00a0(or SCAI)\u00a0group\u00a0in MSR India.\u00a0SCAI focuses on\u00a0deploying\u00a0research findings\u00a0at\u00a0scale in the real world to validate\u00a0them, often working with a wide variety of\u00a0collaborators\u00a0including\u00a0academia, social enterprises and startups.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33713,"featured_media":698995,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"msr-content-parent":199562,"footnotes":""},"research-area":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"class_list":["post-698989","msr-blog-post","type-msr-blog-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_assoc_parent":{"id":199562,"type":"lab"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-blog-post\/698989"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-blog-post"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/msr-blog-post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33713"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-blog-post\/698989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":716323,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-blog-post\/698989\/revisions\/716323"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=698989"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=698989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}