The episode first aired in May, 2018.In the world of machine learning, there’s been a notable trade-off between accuracy and intelligibility. Either the models are accurate but difficult to make sense of, or easy to understand but prone to error. That’s why Dr. Rich Caruana, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, has spent a good part of his career working to make the simple more accurate and the accurate more intelligible.Today, Dr. Caruana talks about how the rise of deep neural networks ...
Jan 02, 2019
This episode first aired in January, 2018.When we look at a skyscraper or a suspension bridge, a simple search engine box on a screen looks tiny by comparison. But Dr. Simon Peyton Jones would like to remind us that computer programs, with hundreds of millions of lines of code, are actually among the largest structures human beings have ever built. A principle researcher at the Microsoft Research Lab in Cambridge, England, co-developer of the programming language Haskell, and a Fellow of Britain...
Dec 26, 2018
This episode first aired in March, 2018.Learning to read, think and communicate effectively is part of the curriculum for every young student. But Dr. Adam Trischler, Research Manager and leader of the Machine Comprehension team at Microsoft Research Montreal, would like to make it part of the curriculum for your computer as well. And he’s working on that, using methods from machine learning, deep neural networks, and other branches of AI to close the communication gap between humans and compute...
Dec 19, 2018
Amos Miller is a product strategist on the Microsoft Research NeXT Enable team, and he’s played a pivotal role in bringing some of MSR’s most innovative research to users with disabilities. He also happens to be blind, so he can appreciate, perhaps in ways others can’t, the value of the technologies he works on, like Soundscape, an app which enhances mobility independence through audio and sound. On today’s podcast, Amos Miller answers burning questions like how do you make a microwave accessibl...
Dec 12, 2018
Dr. Sebastien Bubeck is a mathematician and a senior researcher in the Machine Learning and Optimization group at Microsoft Research. He’s also a self-proclaimed “bandit” who claims that, despite all the buzz around AI, it’s still a science in its infancy. That’s why he’s devoted his career to advancing the mathematical foundations behind the machine learning algorithms behind AI. Today, Dr. Bubeck explains the difficulty of the multi-armed bandit problem in the context of a parameter- and data-...
Dec 05, 2018
Dr. Christopher Bishop is quite a fellow. Literally. Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Fellow of Darwin College in Cambridge, England. Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Fellow of The Royal Society. Microsoft Technical Fellow. And one of the nicest fellows you’re likely to meet! He’s also Director of the Microsoft Research lab in Cambridge, where he oversees a world-class portfolio of research and development endeavors in machine learning and AI. Today, Dr. Bishop talks about th...
Nov 28, 2018
This episode first aired in March (2018)One of the most intriguing areas of machine learning research is affective computing, where scientists are working to bridge the gap between human emotions and computers. It is here, at the intersection of psychology and computer science, that we find Dr. Daniel McDuff, who has been designing systems, from hardware to algorithms, that can sense human behavior and respond to human emotions. Today, Dr. McDuff talks about why we need computers to understand u...
Nov 21, 2018
After decades of research in processing audio signals, we’ve reached the point of so-called performance saturation. But recent advances in machine learning and signal processing algorithms have paved the way for a revolution in speech recognition technology and audio signal processing. Dr. Ivan Tashev, a Partner Software Architect in the Audio and Acoustics Group at Microsoft Research, is no small part of the revolution, having both published papers and shipped products at the forefront of the s...
Nov 14, 2018
In 1998, Microsoft Research opened a small lab in Beijing to expand its research efforts and draw on the immense high-tech talent pool in China. No one expected that only twenty years later, MSR Asia would become the dynamic organization it is today, with innovative research contributing to nearly every part of Microsoft’s business. Dr. Hsiao-Wuen Hon has watched it grow from the beginning and this year, celebrates the lab’s 20th anniversary as Managing Director, Corporate Vice President and Cha...
Nov 07, 2018
As traditional semiconductor technologies for computer storage scale down, everyone is looking for alternative solutions to the growing gap between the amount of data we’re capable of producing and the amount of data we’re capable of storing. While some have focused on hardware accelerators for machine learning, and others are investigating new memory technologies, Dr. Karin Strauss, a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research in Redmond, has been exploring the role of biotechnology in IT via an e...
Oct 31, 2018
The ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius famously exhorted his pupils to study the past if they would divine the future. In 2018, we get the same advice from a decidedly more modern, but equally philosophical Bill Buxton, Principal Researcher in the HCI group at Microsoft Research. In addition to his pioneering work in computer science and design, Bill Buxton has spent the past several decades amassing a collection of more than a thousand artifacts that chronicle the history of human computer i...
Oct 17, 2018
2018 marks the 10th anniversary of Microsoft Research New England in Cambridge, Massachusetts, so it’s the perfect time to talk with someone who was there from the lab’s beginning: Technical Fellow, Managing Director and Co-founder, Dr. Jennifer Chayes. But not only does Dr. Chayes run the New England lab of MSR, she also directs two other highly renowned, interdisciplinary research labs in New York City and Montreal, Quebec. Add to that a full slate of personal research projects and service on ...
Oct 10, 2018
Asta Roseway has a formal title. It’s Principal Research Designer in the HCI group at Microsoft Research. But she’s also been described as a conductor, an alchemist, a millennial in a Gen-Xer’s body and, in her own words, a fusionist. What’s a fusionist, you might ask? Well, you’re about to find out. On today’s podcast, Asta gives an inside look at one of the most unconventional labs at Microsoft Research. Located at the intersection of science, technology and art, it’s a lab that insists that t...
Oct 03, 2018
You may have heard the phrase, necessity is the mother of invention, but for Dr. Nicolo Fusi, a researcher at the Microsoft Research lab in Cambridge, MA, the mother of his invention wasn’t so much necessity as it was boredom: the special machine learning boredom of manually fine-tuning models and hyper-parameters that can eat up tons of human and computational resources, but bring no guarantee of a good result. His solution? Automate machine learning with a meta-model that figures out what othe...
Sep 26, 2018
At the heart of any vibrant research community, you’ll find a diverse range of scientists. You’re also likely to find a robust internship program, like the one at Microsoft Research. This summer, MSR welcomed another stellar group of interns who had the opportunity to learn, collaborate, and network with colleagues and mentors who will impact their lives for years to come. On today’s podcast, you’ll hear the stories of three of these interns, each of whom came to Microsoft Research from a differ...
Sep 19, 2018
Dr. Nancy Baym is a communication scholar, a Principal Researcher in MSR’s Cambridge, Massachusetts, lab, and something of a cyberculture maven. She’s spent nearly three decades studying how people use communication technologies in their everyday relationships and written several books on the subject. The big take away? Communication technologies may have changed drastically over the years, but human communication itself? Not so much. Today, Dr. Baym shares her insights on a host of topics rangi...
Sep 12, 2018
Datacenters have a hard time keeping their cool. Literally. And with more and more datacenters coming online all over the world, calls for innovative solutions to “cool the cloud” are getting loud. So, Ben Cutler and the Special Projects team at Microsoft Research decided to try to beat the heat by using one of the best natural venues for cooling off on the planet: the ocean. That led to Project Natick, Microsoft’s prototype plan to deploy a new class of eco-friendly datacenters, under water, at...
Sep 05, 2018
The wildly popular video game, Minecraft, might appear to be an unlikely candidate for machine learning research, but to Dr. Katja Hofmann, the research lead of Project Malmo in the Machine Intelligence and Perception Group at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, England, it’s the perfect environment for teaching AI agents, via reinforcement learning, to act intelligently – and cooperatively – in the open world. Today, Dr. Hofmann talks about her vision of a future where machines learn to collaborat...
Aug 29, 2018
You know those people who work behind the scenes to make sure nothing bad happens to you, and if they’re really good, you never know who they are because nothing bad happens to you? Well, meet one of those people. Dr. Brian LaMacchia is a Distinguished Engineer and he heads up the Security and Cryptography Group at Microsoft Research. It’s his job to make sure – using up-to-the-minute math – that you’re safe and secure online, both now, and in the post-quantum world to come. Today, Dr. LaMacchia...
Aug 22, 2018
If your idea of a great job includes pursuing untethered research, shepherding brilliant researchers and helping shape the long-term strategy of one of the largest tech companies in the world… oh, and also publishing prolifically, authoring patents, winning awards and speaking around the world… you are in good company. That’s what Dr. Victor Bahl, Distinguished Scientist and Director of Mobility and Networking at Microsoft Research, does for a living. And he loves it! Today, in our first live po...
Aug 15, 2018
