News & features
How technology can bridge language gaps
Speech-to-speech translation promises to help connect our world Among the futuristic gadgets in the classic TV show Star Trek, none seemed more useful than the universal translator, a handheld gizmo that helped foster understanding among intergalactic civilizations. Well, we needn’t travel…
Wing Surveys Her New Opportunity
By Rob Knies, Managing Editor, Microsoft Research When Jeannette Wing joined Microsoft Research in January 2013 as a Microsoft vice president and head of Microsoft Research International, in charge of Microsoft Research’s non-U.S. labs, she brought with her a sterling…
Helping Kinect Recognize Faces
By Douglas Gantenbein, Senior Writer, Microsoft News Center To use a Kinect for Xbox 360 gaming device is to see something akin to magic. Different people move in and out of its view, and Kinect recognizes the change in a…
Speech Recognition Leaps Forward
By Janie Chang, Writer, Microsoft Research During Interspeech 2011, the 12th annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association being held in Florence, Italy, from Aug. 28 to 31, researchers from Microsoft Research will present work that dramatically improves the potential…
Top Researchers Inspire Interns
By Janie Chang, Writer, Microsoft Research Each summer, Microsoft Research facilities from around the world welcome a fresh crop of interns. Microsoft Research considers the intern program a vital part of its interactions with the academic world, with some facilities…
A New Window to the Face
By Douglas Gantenbein, Senior Writer, Microsoft News Center The human face is a complicated thing—powered by 52 muscles; contoured by the nose, eyebrows, and other features; and capable of an almost infinite range of expressions, from joy to anger to…
Researchers Cherish University Roles
By Janie Chang, Writer, Microsoft Research For the past 11 years, the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit has brought academic and government research professionals together to share perspectives on new research, the challenges facing the research community, and ways to break…
MAVIS Unlocks Spoken Words
By Janie Chang, Writer, Microsoft Research Not long ago, Internet content was mostly text-based, with search tools supporting the need to index text efficiently and browsers providing the ability to search within a document for every instance of a keyword…
UIST Showcases Novel Interfaces
By Janie Chang, Writer, Microsoft Research Hallway conversations at UIST 2010 can sound like planning discussions for science-fiction-movie special effects, buzzing with terms such as “wearable computing,” “augmented reality,” and “smart rooms.” UIST, the Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM’s) Symposium…