In February, Chayes and Borgs <\/em>discussed<\/em> their plans for their new venture. In the days before the lab\u2019s official coming-out party, the <\/em>Microsoft Research New England Opening Symposium<\/em><\/a>, to be <\/em>held Sept. 22<\/em> at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Chayes found a few minutes in her busy schedule to outline the progress made thus far:<\/em><\/p>\n Q: How\u2019s life in New England?<\/strong><\/p>\n Chayes:<\/strong> Life in New England is great. I grew up on the East Coast, and I’ve lived in Cambridge before, so in many ways, it’s like coming home. Of course, I miss my friends and colleagues in Seattle\u2015and the glorious Seattle summers.<\/p>\n Q: How is working on the East Coast different from working in Redmond?<\/strong><\/p>\n Jaennifer Chayes<\/p><\/div>\n Chayes:<\/strong> For me, the biggest difference has been our proximity to universities. We are adjacent to MIT, a seven-minute subway ride from Harvard, and a ten-minute drive from Boston University. We’re constantly having visits from faculty and students, both for seminars and for collaborations. We also frequently run over to see our academic colleagues. It’s led to a tremendously rich and exciting intellectual environment.<\/p>\n Q: How are the new offices working out?<\/strong><\/p>\n Chayes:<\/strong> The new office space is fantastic. We have glorious views of the Charles River and the Boston skyline, which serve as inspiration for the nonstop collaboration which occurs in that room. Amazingly enough, we’ve already occupied essentially all the space that’s been built for us, and we are doubling up in some offices. It’s time for more space!<\/p>\n Q: Who\u2019s working with you at the lab at this point?<\/strong><\/p>\n Chayes:<\/strong> Since the announcement of the lab, we’ve hired two new\u00a0permanent researchers, seven new post-docs, seven interns, and a large number of visiting researchers\u2015and we’ve had dozens of official\u00a0faculty visitors since the lab opened in July.<\/p>\n All this is in addition to those of us who were already with Microsoft Research: Christian Borgs, Henry Cohn<\/a>, Butler Lampson<\/a>, and me.<\/p>\n The two new permanent researchers we hired\u00a0are Adam Kalai<\/a> and Yael Tauman Kalai<\/a>. Adam is a game theorist and learning theorist who works on problems related to economics, and Yael is a cryptographer. They had visited Microsoft Research Redmond<\/a> a couple of years ago, so we already had strong research ties to them. Since joining the lab, they have engaged deeply with both Microsoft Research and the nearby universities.<\/p>\n Q: What is driving Microsoft Research New England\u2019s focus on interdisciplinary research?<\/strong><\/p>\n Chayes:<\/strong> I believe this is the time, and Cambridge is the ideal place, for a focus on interdisciplinary research between computer science and many other disciplines\u2015economics, sociology and ethnography, psychology, and biology.<\/p>\n With the vast amounts of data now available, many previously qualitative sciences have become much more quantitative. There is no way to deal with all this data without developing ingenious algorithms that take advantage of both the knowledge of these disciplines and the new developments in theoretical computer science and other hard sciences, such as physics and mathematics.<\/p>\n At the same time, technology and our business models have moved online, which gives us added incentive to understand and facilitate the online experience through the development of new algorithms incorporating insights from the social sciences.<\/p>\n Q: I understand you\u2019ve been participating in several symposiums. How have those gone?<\/strong><\/p>\n Chayes:<\/strong> Our lab has been very lucky to find great partners and colleagues in the local area. We already have two joint seminars with MIT. The first is the longstanding Friday-morning cryptography seminar, which has been held for decades at MIT. It is now a joint Microsoft Research-MIT seminar that alternates between the two institutions.<\/p>\n The second is a seminar with LIDS, the Laboratory of Information and Decision Sciences at MIT, which has faculty from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, as well as other departments. Again, the seminars alternate between our lab and MIT.<\/p>\n Finally, we have our own Microsoft Research seminar, which was held twice a week during the summer and is now being held once a week during the academic year. It is very widely attended by local faculty and students, who make up over half of our audience.<\/p>\n The hallmark of our Microsoft Research and joint seminars is that they are very<\/em> interactive\u2015the audience asks questions almost constantly, which leads to very lively seminars!<\/p>\n![\"Jennifer](\"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Jennifer-Chayes.jpg\")