![\"abouttechfest2010\"](\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2010\/01\/abouttechfest2010.jpg\")
TechFest is an annual event that brings researchers from Microsoft Research\u2019s locations around the world to Redmond to share their latest work with fellow Microsoft employees. Attendees experience some of the freshest, most innovative technologies emerging from Microsoft\u2019s research efforts. The event provides a forum in which product teams and researchers can discuss the novel work occurring in the labs, thereby encouraging effective technology transfer into Microsoft products.<\/p>\n
Project Gustav: Immersive Digital Painting | Video (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n \n<\/p> Scientific applications have diverse data and computation needs that scale from desktop to supercomputers. Besides the nature of the application and the domain, the resource needs for the applications also vary over time\u2014as the collaboration and the data collections expand, or when seasonal campaigns are undertaken. Cloud computing offers a scalable, economic, on-demand model well-matched to evolving eScience needs. We will present a suite of science applications that leverage the capabilities of Microsoft\u2019s Azure cloud-computing platform. We will show tools and patterns we have developed to use the cloud effectively for solving problems in genomics, environmental science, and oceanography, covering both data and compute-intensive applications.<\/p>\n Learn more about this project<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n \n<\/p> To make cloud computing work, we must make applications run substantially faster, both over the Internet and within data centers. Our measurements of real applications show that today\u2019s protocols fall short, leading to slow page-load times across the Internet and congestion collapses inside the data center. We have developed a new suite of architectures and protocols that boost performance and the robustness of communications to overcome these problems. The results are backed by real measurements and a new theory describing protocol dynamics that enables us to remedy fundamental problems in the Transmission Control Protocol. We will demo the experience users will have with Bing Web sites, both with and without our improvements. The difference is stunning. We also will show visualizations of intra-data-center communication problems and our changes that fix them. This work stems from collaborations with Bing and Windows Core Operating System Networking.<\/p>\n Learn more about this project<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n \n<\/p> Virtual machines (VMs) become key platform components for data centers and Microsoft products such as Win8, System Center, and Azure. But existing power-management schemes designed at the server level, such as power capping and CPU throttling, do not work with VMs. VMmeter can estimate per-VM power consumption from Hyper-V performance counters, with the assistance of WinServer2008 R2 machine-level power metering, thus enabling power management at VM granularity. For example, we can selectively throttle VMs with the least performance hit for power capping. This demo compares VMmeter-based with hardware-based power-management solutions. We run multiple VMs, one of them being a high-priority video playback on a server. When a user requests power capping with our solution, the video playback will maintain high performance, while with hardware-capping solutions, we see reduced performance. We also will show how VMmeter can be part of System Center management packs.<\/p>\n Learn more about this project<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n \n<\/p> We will examine the issue of family archiving and present a system designed to enable families to capture, manage, create, and store new kinds of digital memorabilia. The system, using Surface as its hub, shows how families can upload photos and videos quickly and easily, and also scan in physical memorabilia, such as children\u2019s artwork or a child\u2019s first pair of shoes. The system enables families to view these media in many flexible ways and to create new, compelling kinds of digital objects, such as multimedia scrapbooks and even a digital pi\u00f1ata. We further will show how this system would fit into a larger ecosystem of devices in the home and link to new kinds of media displays.<\/p>\n Learn more about this project<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n \n<\/p> In a corporate network, most desktop machines always are left on, even when they are not in use for extended periods, such as at night. This is wasteful, bad for the environment, and bad for the corporate treasury. While Win7 provides aggressive sleep functionality, most users override it because they occasionally might want to access their machine remotely. Ideally, a desktop would go to sleep when not in use and awaken seamlessly when the user tries to access it. We have built a system to enable this. Our system consists of a \u201csleep server\u201d that maintains the network presence of the sleeping machine and seamlessly awakens it on remote access. We do not require special hardware or changes to existing software. Our system is operational in Building 99 and has resulted in substantial savings in terms of money, power consumption, and carbon-dioxide emissions.<\/p>\n Learn more about this project<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n \n<\/p> With cloud computing, users can access their personal data anywhere and anytime. Cloud computing also will enable new forms of data to be provided for users, with applications ranging from Web data mining to social networks. But cloud computing necessitates new interaction metaphors and input-output technology. The cloud mouse is one such technology. Every user will have one. It will be a secure key to every user\u2019s cloud data. And, with six degrees of freedom and with tactile feedback, the cloud mouse will enable users to orchestrate, interact with, and engage with their data as if they were inside the cloud.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n \n<\/p> Mobile devices have reached an impasse. Although the resources that can be integrated onto mobile handheld devices will continue to improve, faster CPUs, more RAM, faster wireless NICs, making substantial use of these resources will require a major breakthrough in battery technology. To bypass these limitations, MAUI (Mobile Assistance Using Infrastructure) is a system that enables fine-grained offloading of mobile applications to cloud-based infrastructure. By leveraging nearby infrastructure, MAUI enables a new class of resource-intensive applications, such as augmented reality, to run on mobile handheld devices. With MAUI, we enable resource-intensive .NET applications to run on Windows Mobile smartphones. We will demonstrate: A resource-intensive face-recognition application that consumes an order-of-magnitude less energy. A voice-based translation application that previously could not run using only the limited resources available on today\u2019s smartphones.<\/p>\n Learn more about this project<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n \n<\/p> We will show how to improve the mobile-search user experience by caching popular search results on mobile devices. First, a community-based cache is created by mining the most popular queries in mobile-search logs. Over time, the cache is personalized by adding all the new user search queries. An analysis of four months of mobile-search logs shows that, on average, 66 percent of the search queries submitted by a user can be answered by caching 2,500 links on a 1MB cache. Our prototype implementation in Windows Mobile demonstrates responses 16 times faster and 23 times more energy-efficient compared with querying through a 3G link. Our prototype also demonstrates how our caching architecture can enable monetization of mobile local search without hurting the mobile user experience. A rich set of ads is first cached on the phone. Because all the ads are locally stored, finding and displaying a mobile local ad is extremely fast, enabling us to display ads instantly to a mobile user as a query is being typed.<\/p>\n Learn more about this project<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n \n<\/p> Mobile Surface is a novel interaction system for mobile computing. Our goal is to bring the Microsoft Surface experience to mobile scenarios and, more importantly, to enable 3-D interaction with mobile devices. We will demonstrate how to transform any surface, such as a coffee table or a piece of paper, into a Mobile Surface by using a mobile device and a camera-projector system. Besides the Surface, we will show 3-D object imaging, augmented reality, and multiple-layer 3-D information visualization. In particular, we have developed a system with the camera-projector component to scan 3-D objects in real time while doing normal projection. To visualize, 3-D data can be projected onto a surface formed by a piece of paper while maintaining the original scale as if it were printed on that paper, and a user can interact with the projected content with a hand. Mobile Surface enables you to interact with digital contents and information around you from anywhere.<\/p>\n Learn more about this project<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n \n<\/p> Mobile devices increasingly are first-class computing devices, generating large amounts of data. Searching and sharing data securely across multiple devices can be a significant challenge. We have built Contrail, a communication abstraction for P2P communication on mobile phones. Communication in Contrail is purely asynchronous, coping with the fact that phones temporarily are disconnected from the network. Phones set up filters with other phones expressing their interest set. We will demonstrate the usage of Contrail with three applications: P2P content distribution, P2P search, and location-based group communication.<\/p>\n Learn more about this project<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n \n<\/p> Microsoft has innovated continually in developing novel interaction modalities, or natural user interfaces. Surface and Project Natal are two examples. While these modalities rely on sensors and devices situated in the environment, we believe there is a need for new modalities that enhance the mobile experience. We take advantage of sensing technologies that enable us to decode the signals generated by the body. We will demo muscle-computer interfaces, electromyography-based armbands that sense muscular activation directly to infer finger gestures on surfaces and in free space, and bio-acoustic interfaces, mechanical sensors on the body that enable us to turn the entire body into a tap-based input device.<\/p>\n Learn more about the Skinput project<\/p>\n Learn more about the Muscle-Computer Interfaces project<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n \n<\/p> As video and still cameras have become almost ubiquitous, people are taking increasingly more photographs and videos of the world around them. Often, the photographer\u2019s intent is to capture more than what can be seen in a single photograph, and he or she instead takes a large set of images or a video clip to capture a large scene or a moment that extends over time. One can combine these images to produce an output that improves the input images, such as creating an image with a large field of view, a panorama, or a composite image that takes the best parts of the image, a photo montage. But creating these results is still non-trivial for many users. One challenge is in creating large-scale panoramas, for which the capture and stitching times can be long. In addition, when using consumer-level point-and-shoot cameras and camera phones, artifacts such as motion blur appear. Another challenge is combining large image sets from photos or videos to produce results that use the best parts of the images to create an enhanced photograph. We will present several new technologies that advance the state of the art in these areas and create improved user experiences. For panorama generation, we will demonstrate: ICE 2.0. Stitching of panoramas from video. Generating sharp panoramas from blurry videos. For generating composites, we will demonstrate: Video to snapshots. De-noising and sharpening using lucky imaging.<\/p>\n Learn more about this project<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n \n<\/p> Today, my album refers to a collection of photos I have taken. But many photos relevant to me\u2014such as photos of me or my children\u2014are in my friends\u2019 albums. OneAlbum automatically finds relevant photos in my friends\u2019 albums on social networks or in shared albums, brings them to my album, and shows them side-by-side with the photos I\u2019ve taken. For example, if I was at a party, I\u2019ll see all photos from that party\u2014those I\u2019ve taken and those my friends took. The technology behind OneAlbum is a novel, unsupervised face-recognition algorithm. It analyzes the photos in my album to find automatically the faces of people I most care about, based on frequency of their appearance; no tagging is required. Then, using the social-network graph and other information, OneAlbum crawls my friend\u2019s albums looking for photos of people that interest me. The algorithm was tested on real large-scale albums including tens of thousands of photos and achieved accuracy rates as high as 90 percent.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n \n<\/p> Project posterGustav is a realistic painting-system prototype that enables artists to become immersed in the digital painting experience. The natural interface makes Gustav ideal for hobbyists and professional artists alike. Gustav achieves a high level of interactivity and realism by leveraging the computing power of modern GPUs, taking full advantage of multitouch and tablet input technology and our novel, natural media-modeling and brush-simulation algorithms. Our prototype provides convincingly realistic models for pastel and oil media, with more to come.<\/p>\n Learn more about this project<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n \n<\/p> Saving desktop energy has been an area of focus at Microsoft Research India over the past year. WARP and LiteGreen are complementary projects under this theme. WARP is a composition of platform components that facilitates remote power-state management of a PC using the Wake-on-LAN and other system-management mechanisms. This system is virtually stateless and provides user interfaces for system management. Features include remote peer-to-peer wakeups and remote sleep, hibernate, or shutdown of a desktop and asynchronous machine-state transitions based on events published from user interfaces such as the Web, e-mail, SMS, and location-based services. Automatic desktop upgrades, centralized system control, delegation of power management, and auditing are also components of this system. LiteGreen is a system for saving energy from idle PCs in enterprises by exploiting short idle periods as well as long ones. To avoid user disruption, LiteGreen virtualizes the desktop computing environment and migrates it between the physical PC and a virtual-machine server, depending on whether the desktop computing environment is being used. Based on usage analysis of 120 desktops at Microsoft Research India, LiteGreen was able to deliver energy savings of 72 to 74 percent. When a user steps away from a PC, the desktop is migrated to a server and the PC is put to sleep. When the user returns, he or she is able to start using the desktop immediately.<\/p>\n Learn more about this project<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n \n<\/p> We will show two solutions that enable financial-service delivery to low-income individuals in developing countries. Both integrate the use of portable digital devices with paper-based tools that cost little and are widely used in developing countries. The first solution focuses on improving microfinance-record management through the use of pen-and-paper-based input on a low-cost digital slate device. Handwritten data on paper is digitized and processed simultaneously to provide instant user feedback, delivering gains in data quality and process efficiency. The second solution addresses a security concern in mobile-phone-based banking transactions. We use paper to facilitate secure PIN entry on mobile phones and to achieve a suitable tradeoff between security and usability in phone-assisted banking.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n \n<\/p> We will demonstrate a system for live speech-to-text and speech-to-speech translation of telephone calls. Douglas Adams\u2019 Babelfish inspired dreams of unfettered universal communication. Though we are still far from achieving that goal, there are scenarios in which today\u2019s limited accuracy can create value. Our goal in the telephone-call scenario is to provide an aid for cross-language communication in the event that no other means of communication exists. The system we will show makes extensive use of speaker-adaptation technologies to achieve reasonable, real-time speech-to-text transcription accuracy. This is then translated live using machine translation to provide speech-to-text translation and further fed into a text-to-speech system to realize speech-to-speech translation. The speech-to-text transcript and the translated transcript are shown to the users to enable validation of their intentions. This system will be demonstrated by a live conversation between German and English speakers.<\/p>\n Learn more about this project<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n \n<\/p> Since its founding in 1991, Microsoft Research has grown into one of the largest, and most respected software research organizations in the world. Today, more than 1,100 brilliant scientists and engineers \u2014 among them the brightest minds in computer science \u2014 work in 13 labs, across four continents, on a mission that has stayed the same for over 20 years: to advance the state of the art in computing through a combination of basic and applied research.The reason is simple: innovation is the lifeblood of Microsoft\u2019s products and services. As our researchers solve the toughest problems in computing, share their ideas with the greater research community, and collaborate with Microsoft product groups, they\u2019re ensuring that the company \u2014 and the industry \u2014 will continue to find new ways for technology to enhance our world for years to come.<\/p>\n To be successful, basic and applied research depends on three practices essential for any venture: building mutually beneficial relationships, maintaining effective two-way communication, and nurturing bonds of trust. We carry out these practices through collaboration with internal product teams, and external researchers.<\/p>\n Our labs are unique among corporate research facilities in that they balance an open academic model with an effective process for building research results into product development. This approach, unique among corporate research facilities, pays off for Microsoft as enhancements to virtually every product and service it offers and as entirely new lines of business for the company. At the same time, it produces significant technological and intellectual advances across the spectrum of computer science.<\/p>\n Our contributions to Microsoft are reflected in the company\u2019s sustained investment in research and development. Unlike other companies, where research projects must be funded by individual product groups, Microsoft funds its research at the corporate level to ensure that we are looking beyond immediate product considerations to problems further in the future.<\/p>\n We are excited to be developing technologies that weave software, hardware, and services into every aspect of our lives, thereby advancing toward the goal of making computers genuinely useful \u2014 We see a future in which computers interact with people the way we interact with each other, think ahead to anticipate and meet our needs, and support us as we make the most of our ideas, efforts, and intellect. Developing next-generation software that improves people\u2019s lives is stimulating work, and we look forward to the breakthroughs we\u2019ll make in the years ahead.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n \n<\/p> Microsoft Research is dedicated to pursuing innovation through basic and applied research in computer science and software engineering. Basic long-term research, unconstrained by the demands of product cycles, leads to new discoveries and lays the foundation for future technology breakthroughs that can define new paradigms, such as the current move toward cloud computing and software-plus-services. Applied research focuses on the near-term goal of improving products by transferring research findings and innovative technology to development teams. By balancing basic and applied research, and by maintaining an effective bridge between the two, Microsoft Research continually advances the state of the art in computer science and redefines the computing experience for millions of people worldwide.<\/p>\n Microsoft Research has more than 1,100 brilliant scientists and engineers, including some of the world\u2019s finest computer scientists, sociologists, psychologists, mathematicians, physicists, and engineers, working in our worldwide locations. Microsoft researchers work across more than 60 disciplines within the following areas:<\/p>\n\n\n\t\t\t\tClient + Cloud Computing for Research\t\t\t<\/h4>\n
\n\n\t\t\t\tCloud Faster\t\t\t<\/h4>\n
\n\n\t\t\t\tEnergy-Aware VMs and Cloud Computing\t\t\t<\/h4>\n
\n\n\t\t\t\tThe Future of Looking Back\t\t\t<\/h4>\n
\n\n\t\t\t\tGreening Corporate Networks with Sleep Proxy\t\t\t<\/h4>\n
\n\n\t\t\t\tInside the Cloud: New Cloud-Computing Interaction\t\t\t<\/h4>\n
\n\n\t\t\t\tMobile Assistance Using Infrastructure (MAUI)\t\t\t<\/h4>\n
\n\n\t\t\t\tMobile-Search and Advertisement-Cache Architecture\t\t\t<\/h4>\n
\n\n\t\t\t\tMobile Surface\t\t\t<\/h4>\n
\n\n\t\t\t\tMobile-to-Mobile Networking in 3G Networks\t\t\t<\/h4>\n
\n\n\t\t\t\tNatural User Interfaces with Physiological Sensing\t\t\t<\/h4>\n
\n\n\t\t\t\tNew Technologies for Multi-Image Fusion\t\t\t<\/h4>\n
\n\n\t\t\t\tOneAlbum-Find Your Photos in Your Friends’ Albums\t\t\t<\/h4>\n
\n\n\t\t\t\tProject Gustav: Immersive Digital Painting\t\t\t<\/h4>\n
\n\n\t\t\t\tSaving Desktop Energy: WakeOnLAN & Virtualization\t\t\t<\/h4>\n
\n\n\t\t\t\tTechnologies for Rural Financial-Service Delivery\t\t\t<\/h4>\n
\n\n\t\t\t\tThe Translating! Telephone\t\t\t<\/h4>\n
\n\n\n\t\t\t\tInventing the Future of Computing\t\t\t<\/h4>\n
\n\n\t\t\t\tAccelerating Research and Discovery\t\t\t<\/h4>\n
\n
![\"page2\"](\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2010\/01\/page2.jpg\")
Microsoft Research collaborates with the world\u2019s foremost researchers in academia, industry, and government to move research in new directions across nearly every field of computer science, engineering, and general science. As part of that effort, Microsoft builds deep relationships with key universities worldwide to enhance teaching and learning experiences, to inspire technological innovation, and to strengthen computer-science and engineering education. Through global and regional initiatives, Microsoft aims to accelerate research and discovery and, ultimately, to help researchers and scientists address some of the most urgent and challenging societal and technological issues facing humankind.<\/p>\n![\"page4\"](\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2010\/01\/page4.jpg\")
The Sensors and Devices Group is exploring how new forms of hardware can be combined with innovative software to enrich the user experience when interacting with computer systems of all types. The group\u2019s projects include SenseCam, a badge-like wearable device that automatically captures images and sensor data as people move through their day, creating a \u201cvisual blog\u201d that can then be played back at high speed to share particular experiences with friends or as a way to reflect upon a day\u2019s activities.<\/p>\n![\"page4_2\"](\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2010\/01\/page4_2.jpg\")
To help administrators quickly identify and resolve the myriad problems that can occur in today\u2019s data centers \u2014 which can include tens of thousands of individual servers that could fail for any number of reasons \u2014 Microsoft researchers are using advanced visualization and machine-learning techniques to predict and anticipate problems well in advance. Additionally, the Microsoft Research Extreme Computing Group (XCG) is looking to reinvent hardware and software technologies for the future of Cloud Computing. This work will greatly improve energy efficiencies, quality control processes, plus datacenter startup and operating costs.<\/p>\n![\"page4_3\"](\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2010\/01\/page4_3.jpg\")
The Theory group at Microsoft Research is engaged in fundamental problems in mathematics and theoretical computer science, including probability theory, combinatorics, statistical physics, metric geometry, fractals, algorithms, and optimization \u2014 all of which have the potential to help computers work faster, solve problems, and make decisions.<\/p>\n![\"page5_1\"](\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2010\/01\/page5_1.jpg\")
Microsoft Research collaborates with medical researchers at the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard; the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center; the University of Washington; and the University of Oxford to design an effective vaccine for HIV\/AIDS, in which techniques for machine learning are used to identify the most vulnerable parts within the immune system. Researchers from the Pontificia Universidad Cat\u00f3lica de Chile and the Instituto Polit\u00e9cnico Nacional in Mexico collaborate with Microsoft Research on a project to use computer-vision technology to improve quality control in the food industry \u2014 a key part of the Latin American economy.<\/p>\n![\"page6_1\"](\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2010\/01\/page6_1.jpg\")
Among Microsoft Research\u2019s great minds are the co-creators of the laser printer, the Ethernet local-area network, and the Mach operating system. There are winners of the Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology and the A.M. Turing award \u2014 two of the most prestigious awards presented to computer scientists. There are fellows of the Royal Society and winners of other prestigious prizes, including the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the Charles Stark Draper Prize, the Fields Medal given by the International Mathematical Union, the IEEE John von Neumann Medal, the IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award, the G\u00f6del Prize, the Computer Graphics Achievement Awards from SIGGRAPH, the SIGCHI Academy Award, and even Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awards. One Microsoft researcher has been knighted by the Queen of the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n![\"page5_2\"](\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/uploads\/prod\/2010\/01\/page5_2.jpg\")
Microsoft Research has expanded over the years to eleven labs worldwide and a number of collaborative projects that bring together the best minds in computer science to advance a research agenda based on their unique talents and interests:Microsoft Research\u2019s original lab at the company\u2019s headquarters in ![\"abouttechfest2010\"](\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/abouttechfest2010.jpg\")
TechFest is an annual event that brings researchers from Microsoft Research\u2019s locations around the world to Redmond to share their latest work with fellow Microsoft employees. Attendees experience some of the freshest, most innovative technologies emerging from Microsoft\u2019s research efforts. The event provides a forum in which product teams and researchers can discuss the novel work occurring in the labs, thereby encouraging effective technology transfer into Microsoft products.\r\n![\"page2\"](\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/page2.jpg\")
Microsoft Research collaborates with the world\u2019s foremost researchers in academia, industry, and government to move research in new directions across nearly every field of computer science, engineering, and general science. As part of that effort, Microsoft builds deep relationships with key universities worldwide to enhance teaching and learning experiences, to inspire technological innovation, and to strengthen computer-science and engineering education. Through global and regional initiatives, Microsoft aims to accelerate research and discovery and, ultimately, to help researchers and scientists address some of the most urgent and challenging societal and technological issues facing humankind.\r\n\r\nMicrosoft researchers make breakthroughs, large and small, that enable people to use computing to do more things in more places throughout their lives and to interact with technology as naturally as they do with each other. Put more simply, Microsoft Research is building the future by turning ideas into reality.\r\n\r\n[\/panel]\r\n\r\n[panel header=\"Enabling Breakthroughs \"]\r\n\r\nBy its nature, research is an incremental, step-by-step process. Innovations can take years to evolve. The impact of today\u2019s idea might not be fully realized until years later, but the implications of any new technology can be far-reaching. This is why Microsoft researchers focus on advancing the state of the art in a broad range of areas, including many that don\u2019t have commercial applications in today\u2019s software. Researchers also put Microsoft innovation to work to advance other areas of science. Such efforts have included:\r\n\r\nWorldWide Telescope. <\/b>WorldWide Telescope is a collaborative effort between Microsoft Research and a variety of academic and governmental agencies, such as NASA, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and the Adler Planetarium. It is available as a free resource to the astronomy and education communities with the hope that it will inspire and empower people to explore and understand the universe as never before.\r\n\r\nGenetic Research. <\/b>Along with several other research groups, the eScience Research group is collaborating with biologists to unravel some of the gene-splicing mechanisms in higher organisms and to create an improved model of evolution. Additionally, the group is helping to analyze associations between diseases and genetic variations in humans, and working with biologists to develop languages that will better describe biological systems.\r\n\r\n[\/panel]\r\n\r\n[panel header=\"Imagining What Comes Next \"]\r\n\r\nMicrosoft Researchers are innovators whose jobs are never finished: to continue to advance the state of the art in computer science. With the freedom to pursue the subjects they are passionate about, they look for gaps in current technologies and dedicate themselves to filling them. They envision what comes next, without worrying about product-delivery deadlines. When their ideas lead to real-world applications, the researchers work with a team of technology-transfer agents or directly with product teams to weave them into Microsoft software and services. Occasionally, researchers involved with a project transfer to a product-development group where their initial ideas will take shape. Nearly every Microsoft product in the marketplace today has been influenced by this approach, including the Windows Server\u00ae System, SQL Server\u00ae, the Xbox\u00ae gaming system and Kinect game controller, MSN\u00ae, Bing\u2122, and Windows Media\u00ae. The projects described in this section represent just a fraction of the many ways that Microsoft researchers are advancing the state of the art in computing.\r\n![\"page4\"](\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/page4.jpg\")
The Sensors and Devices Group is exploring how new forms of hardware can be combined with innovative software to enrich the user experience when interacting with computer systems of all types. The group\u2019s projects include SenseCam, a badge-like wearable device that automatically captures images and sensor data as people move through their day, creating a \u201cvisual blog\u201d that can then be played back at high speed to share particular experiences with friends or as a way to reflect upon a day\u2019s activities.\r\n\r\nAs the devices that surround us become more powerful and connected \u2014 from mobile phones to in-car computers \u2014 there is greater demand for user interfaces that transcend the keyboard and the mouse. Microsoft Research has made significant advances in speech and handwriting recognition that help us interact with today\u2019s PCs and mobile devices as we interact with each other. But the work doesn\u2019t end there.\r\n![\"page4_2\"](\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/page4_2.jpg\")
To help administrators quickly identify and resolve the myriad problems that can occur in today\u2019s data centers \u2014 which can include tens of thousands of individual servers that could fail for any number of reasons \u2014 Microsoft researchers are using advanced visualization and machine-learning techniques to predict and anticipate problems well in advance. Additionally, the Microsoft Research Extreme Computing Group (XCG) is looking to reinvent hardware and software technologies for the future of Cloud Computing. This work will greatly improve energy efficiencies, quality control processes, plus datacenter startup and operating costs.\r\n\r\nThe Rigorous Software Engineering team is working to improve the quality of software tools by combining traditional program analysis with statistical methods. The approach is able to identify security vulnerabilities, generate specifications for APIs, point to potential root causes of bugs, and find relevant information from bug repositories and version control during debugging. In initial testing, one tool built using the approach has demonstrated an ability to identify more potential vulnerabilities than existing tools and processes.\r\n\r\nOther Microsoft Research projects advance design, development, debugging, develop formal techniques and models to better understand programs, programming abstractions, and languages; and improve the methods, notation, and tool support for high-level system design and analysis. A number of Microsoft researchers are conducting security-related work that includes researching new encoding methods and applications to enhance privacy and security, collaborating with standards bodies to develop security protocols, and providing internal security consulting on Microsoft products.\r\n