Past events:
Latin American Faculty Summit 2016
Latin American Faculty Summit 2014
Latin American Faculty Summit 2012
Latin American Faculty Summit 2010
Latin American Faculty Summit 2009
Microsoft Research hosted its seventh annual Latin American Faculty Summit in Cartagena, Colombia, May 18 to 20, 2011. This event was organized in partnership with Colciencias (opens in new tab). The theme of the 2011 summit was Advancing Computing; Advancing Science. View videos of the presentations from the summit on the Videos tab.
Advancing Computing; Advancing Science
Computing stands at a crossroads. The long-discussed movement from single-processor to multi-processor computers—whether on a single die or via a cloud—has become a reality that drives the need and opportunity for new paradigms in software engineering and development. The means to command and access computing resources—whether through voice recognition, multi-touch, or gesture—are becoming increasingly technologically and economically feasible. New ways to search, visualize, and organize large data enables new scientific understanding in fields like environmental research, astronomy, and digital humanities. Advances in computing approaches and algorithms are revealing new possibilities in the use of genomics to support innovations in biology, medicine, agriculture, and bio-energy.
Microsoft Research has an ongoing program of collaborations that focus on these research challenges. Attendees of the 2011 Latin American Summit had the opportunity to hear about the latest research resulting from our collaborations.
About Colciencias
Colciencias is the Administrative Department of Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) in Colombia. It promotes policies for knowledge production as well as STI capacity building for the integral development of the country and wellbeing of the Colombian citizens.
Colciencias coordinates the National System of Science, Technology, and Innovation and creates synergies and interactions in order to build a knowledge economy. Since 2010, Colciencias has a ministerial level that demonstrates the relevance and the commitment of the Colombian government to science, technology, and innovation. Colciencias is the only governmental organization that works with the academic, industrial, and official sectors to stimulate technological and scientific development, and international competitiveness.
As part of its international collaboration agenda, Colciencias and Microsoft are partnering in the creation of the National Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology and also partnered in the organization of the Microsoft Research Latin American Faculty Summit that was held in Cartagena from May 18 to 20, 2011.