Microsoft Research Innovation at the Frontiers of Computing Andrew Herbert Chairman, Microsoft Research, EMEA 31st March 2011

Microsoft Research Mission Advance state of the art in computer science Transfer technology to Microsoft businesses Lead Microsoft into the future

Culture

Integrated Systems Information Retrieval Cloud Computing Computational Biology Programming Security Machine Learning Inference Supporting European Science Sensors and Devices Constraint Reasoning Distributed Systems Socio-digital Systems Natural User Interfaces Operating Systems Game Theory Networking Computational Ecology Data Mining Environmental Science Understanding Images Disease Modelling

data

 So dealing with data is about 3 things…. ● Having the compute power to do it… ● Having the programming paradigms to do it… ● And having something to do…  Compute power isn’t really a problem ….

"This is a pivotal moment that will carry with it a wave of change, the ripples of which will reach far beyond video games“ STEVEN SPIELBERG

Andrew Blake, Kentaro Toyama, Probablisitic tracking in a metric space, Awarded the Marr Prize, IEEE International conference on Computer Vision, 2001 Understanding Human Motion

Ramanan Navaratnam, Andrew Fitzgibbon, Roberto Cipolla, The Joint Manifold Model for Semi-supervised Multi-valued Regression, IEEE International conference on Computer Vision, 2007 Understanding Human Motion

Understanding Images J. Shotton, J. Winn, C. Rother, A. Criminisi, TextonBoost: Joint Appearance, Shape and Context Modeling for Multi-Class Object Recognition and Segmentation. European Conference on Computer Vision, 2006

Large Scale Machine Learning Behind the scenes: AdPredictor

Skills  Mathematics ● Algebra: logic, matrices, … ● Probability, Bayes, …  Electronics and materials  Engineering ● Systems, devices  Design  Social sciences ● Psychology, ethnography, …  Economics ● Business and behavioural  Philosophy ● Ethics  Science – methods of research, use of evidence

Taxonomy for Computing Talent  Inventors ● Create new concepts, technologies and business models ● Creative, risk takers, visionaries  Integrators ● Combine technologies and create platforms to deliver new capabilities ● Deep and broad knowledge, professional  Application Builders ● Use platforms to build solutions in fields of application ● Business oriented ● Best are innovators in business processes and new applications ● Worst are locked into specific technologies  Operators ● Keep the stuff running ● Vocational skills, people skills esp. in support and public facing roles  Users ● Digitally literate, but less and less so as technology “consumerizes”