Microsoft Research Podcast Researchers across the Microsoft research community

Behind every emerging technology is a great idea propelling it forward. In the new Microsoft Research Podcast series, Ideas, members of the research community at Microsoft discuss the beliefs that animate their research, the experiences and thinkers that inform it, and the positive human impact it targets. In this episode, host Gretchen Huizinga talks with Principal Researcher Behnaz Arzani (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/bearzani/). Arzani has always been attracted to hard problems, and there’s no shortage of them in her field of choice—network management—where her contributions to heuristic analysis and incident diagnostics are helping the networks people use today run more smoothly. But the criteria she uses to determine whether a challenge deserves her time has evolved. These days, a problem must appeal across several dimensions: Does it answer a hard technical question? Would the solution be useful to people? And … would she enjoy solving it?Learn more:* Solving Max-Min Fair Resource Allocations Quickly on Large Graphs (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/solving-max-min-fair-resource-allocations-quickly-on-large-graphs/) | Publication, February 2024* Finding Adversarial Inputs for Heuristics using Multi-level Optimization (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/finding-adversarial-inputs-for-heuristics-using-multi-level-optimization/) | Publication, February 2024* MetaOpt: Examining, explaining, and improving heuristic performance (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/metaopt-examining-explaining-and-improving-heuristic-performance/) | Microsoft Research blog, January 2024* A Holistic View of AI-driven Network Incident Management (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/a-holistic-view-of-ai-driven-network-incident-management/) | Publication, October 2023* Behnaz Arzani: Painting, storytelling, and other hobbies (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/bearzani/painting-and-other-hobbies/) | Microsoft Research bio page

Principal PM Manager Weishung Liu shares how a career delivering products and customer experiences aligns with her love of people and storytelling and how—despite efforts to defy the expectations that come with growing up in Silicon Valley—she landed in tech.Learn more:* Weishung Liu at Microsoft Research (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/weisliu/)* Watch For (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/watch-for/overview/) | Project page* Developer Tech Minutes: Watch For (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/video/developer-tech-minutes-watch-for/) | Video, 2021

Social scientist and HCI expert Abigail Sellen explores the critical understanding needed to build human-centric AI through the lens of the new AICE initiative, a collective of interdisciplinary researchers studying AI impact on human cognition and the economy.Learn more:* AI, Cognition, and the Economy (AICE) (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/collaboration/ai-cognition-and-the-economy-aice/) * Responsible AI Principles and Approach | Microsoft AI (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/principles-and-approach/)  * The Rise of the AI Co-Pilot: Lessons for Design from Aviation and Beyond (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/the-rise-of-the-ai-co-pilot-lessons-for-design-from-aviation-and-beyond/) * The Myth of the Paperless Office (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/myth-paperless-office/)

Members of the research community at Microsoft work continuously to advance their respective fields. Abstracts brings its audience to the cutting edge with them through short, compelling conversations about new and noteworthy achievements. In this episode, Principal Research Manager Andrey Kolobov (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/akolobov/) joins host Gretchen Huizinga to discuss “WindSeer: Real-time volumetric wind prediction over complex terrain aboard a small uncrewed aerial vehicle (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/windseer-real-time-volumetric-wind-prediction-over-complex-terrain-aboard-a-small-uav/),” or sUAV. sUAVs can fly farther and more safely if they can reason about the terrain-affected wind in their vicinity. Traditional wind predictions ignore small-terrain features and work at the scale of hours and miles, far too coarsely for sUAVs. WindSeer can estimate the terrain-dependent wind field around an sUAV in flight, with limited onboard compute and measurement data, paving the way for safer and more energy-efficient autonomous drone operation.Learn more:* WindSeer: Real-time volumetric wind prediction over complex terrain aboard a small uncrewed aerial vehicle (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/windseer-real-time-volumetric-wind-prediction-over-complex-terrain-aboard-a-small-uav/)

In the Microsoft Research Podcast series What’s Your Story, Johannes Gehrke explores the who behind the technical and scientific advancements helping to reshape the world. A systems expert whose 10 years with Microsoft spans research and product, Gehrke talks to members of the company’s research community about what motivates their work and how they got where they are today.In this episode, Gehrke is joined by Jacki O’Neill (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/jaoneil/), director of Microsoft Research Africa, Nairobi (formerly the Microsoft Africa Research Institute, or MARI) in Kenya. O’Neill pitched the idea for the lab after seeing an opportunity to expand the Microsoft research portfolio. She shares how a desire to build tech that can have global societal impact and a familial connection to the continent factored into the decision; how a belief that life is meant to be exciting has allowed her to take big personal and professional swings; and how her team in Nairobi is applying their respective expertise in human-computer interaction, machine learning, and data science to pursue globally equitable AI.To learn more about the global impact of AI, efforts to make AI more equitable, and related topics, register for Microsoft Research Forum (https://researchforum.microsoft.com/), a series of panel discussions and lightning talks around science and technology research in the era of general AI.Learn more:* Jacki O'Neill at Microsoft Research (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/jaoneil/?msockid=23b9b9353d686c6e3047ad083c866df5)* Microsoft Research Africa (formerly MARI) (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/group/microsoft-africa-research-institute-mari/)

Members of the research community at Microsoft work continuously to advance their respective fields. Abstracts brings its audience to the cutting edge with them through short, compelling conversations about new and noteworthy achievements.In this episode, Senior Principal Researcher Michel Galley (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/mgalley/) joins host Gretchen Huizinga to discuss “MathVista: Evaluating Mathematical Reasoning of Foundation Models in Visual Contexts (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/mathvista-evaluating-mathematical-reasoning-of-foundation-models-in-visual-contexts/),” which was accepted at the 2024 International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR). MathVista, an open-source benchmark, combines new and existing data to measure how good models are at solving a variety of math problems that involve processing images as well as text, helping to gain insight into their reasoning capabilities.Read the paperGet the code & dataset