Microsoft Research Podcast Researchers across the Microsoft research community

Behnaz Arzani loves hard problems and the freedom to explore. That makes research a great fit! She discusses her work in network management, including the potential role of LLMs in the field; the challenges that excite her; and how storytelling changed her life.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/)

Andrey Kolobov discusses WindSeer, a small CNN capable of estimating the wind field around an sUAV in flight more finely and with less compute and data than traditional models. The advancement can help support longer and safer autonomous flights.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/)

Jacki O'Neill saw an opportunity to expand Microsoft research efforts to Africa. She now leads Microsoft Research Africa, Nairobi (formerly MARI). O'Neill talks about the choices that got her there, the lab’s impact, and how living abroad is good for innovation. 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/)

Researcher Michel Galley explores how he and fellow researchers combined new and existing data to create MathVista, an open-source benchmark for measuring the mathematical reasoning capabilities of foundation models in scenarios that involve text and images.Read the paperGet the code & dataset