By Satish Sangameswaran, Principal Program Manager, and Vani Mandava, Director, Data Science The newspaper headlines about “Bangalore’s looming water crisis” have been ominous, with one urban planning expert proclaiming that Bangalore will become “unlivable” in a few years because of water scarcity. This is a…
By Kenji Takeda, Director, Azure for Research, AI and Research Ever since Nicola Bonzanni was a little boy playing in the tiny Italian village of Bonate Sotto, just north of Milan, he was fascinated by nature and by building things. As he grew up, he…
By Kenji Takeda, Director, Azure for Research Doctors make life-saving — and life-changing — decisions every day. But how do they know that they are making the best decisions? Can artificial intelligence (AI) help? “Before evidence-based medicine, decision-making in health care was heavily reliant on…
By Vani Mandava, Director, Data Science, Microsoft Research While some may regard data science as an easy passport to a job for the tech savvy, Luis Macias has different ideas. The fourth-year undergraduate student, who is majoring in American Studies at University of California, Berkeley…
By Kenji Takeda, Solutions Architect and Technical Manager and Arjmand Samuel, Principal Program Manager, Microsoft Research We are in the midst of an invisible revolution, with the promise of ubiquitous and pervasive computing not a dream but a newly emerging reality. The nexus of cheap and capable…
By Vani Mandava, Senior Program Manager, Microsoft Research People often rank public speaking as the number one fear that they face. New cloud-based technology from researchers at the University of Rochester lets speakers polish and practice at home in front of their computer camera, while the…
By Kristin Tolle, Director, Microsoft Research On October 31, 2013, the city of Austin, Texas, faced a destructive flood. At the time, I was visiting David Maidment, Chaired Professor of the Civil Engineering Center for Research in Water Resources on site at the University of…
By Kenji Takeda, Solution Architect and Technical Manager, Microsoft Research Jacob Katuva used to get up at dawn to cycle 12 miles from his village to collect water with his uncles and cousins when he was growing up in Kenya. Now he is part of…
Nobody likes a delay at the airport. Many of us have spent time buckled up, ready for takeoff, wondering why our plane is stuck on its way between the gate and the runway. Scientists in the United Kingdom are working hard to help untangle these…
By Daron Green, Deputy Director, Microsoft Research Shellfish farmer Bill Dewey remembers the first year he heard of ocean acidification, a phrase that means a change in chemistry for ocean water. It was around 2008, and Dewey worked for Taylor Shellfish, a company that farms oysters…
Stuart, a 66-year-old man with diabetes, felt lousy—constantly fatigued, nauseated, and short of breath after just the slightest exertion. His daughter, worried by his increasing frailty, took him to the emergency room at the local hospital. Her concern was amply justified: Stuart was suffering from…
More than half of the world’s population now lives in cities and suburbs, and as just about any of these billions of people can tell you, urban traffic can be a nightmare. Cars stack up bumper-to-bumper, clogging our highways, jangling our nerves, taxing our patience,…
