Microsoft Research Lab – Redmond
News & features
MakeCode for Minecraft makes learning to code super fun
| Peli de Halleux
A few years ago, my group in Microsoft’s research organization began to experiment with tools that make it possible for kids to learn how to code in the context of Minecraft, the wildly popular game where players build fantastical…
In the news | Microsoft Translator Blog
Microsoft and Huawei deliver Full Neural On-device Translations
Microsoft is delivering the world’s first fully neural on device translations in the Microsoft Translator app for Android, customized for the Huawei Mate 10 series.
Awards | Ubicomp 2017
John Krumm receives Ubicomp 10-Year Impact Award for 2007 paper
John Krumm received a 10-Year Impact Award for his 2007 paper, Inference Attacks on Location Tracks, at the 2017 ACM Ubicomp Conference (opens in new tab), a gathering of experts in pervasive and ubiquitous computing. The paper exposed real-world privacy vulnerabilities associated…
In the news | Der Spiegel
How Microsoft and Google want to beat cancer
As a first step, Microsoft wants to teach machines to read so that they understand the text, because most of the medical knowledge lies in texts: endless information on biological processes, therapeutic mechanisms and clinical studies is buried on billions…
Awards | Microsoft Stories
Artificial intelligence eclipses cloud and mobile projects to win the day at Microsoft 2017 Hackathon
What started in 2014 as an experiment to engage employees has turned into a strategic tradition to help Microsoft establish itself at the leading edge of innovation. And this year, the hottest player at the Microsoft Hackathon was artificial intelligence.
In the news | Wired
To Protect Genetic Privacy, Encrypt Your DNA
Kristin Lauter, head of cryptography research at Microsoft, leads research that encodes data in such a way that scientists don’t lose the flexibility to perform medically useful genetic tests.
Real world interactive learning at cusp of enabling new class of applications
By Alekh Agarwal and John Langford, Microsoft Research New York Clicks on Microsoft’s news website MSN.com increased 26 percent when a machine-learning system based on contextual-bandit algorithms was deployed in January 2016 to personalize news articles for individual users. The…
In the news | Quartz
Microsoft is fixing a simple reason why voice assistants are so bad
As more and more of us ask the virtual personal assistants that live on our phones what the weather will be tomorrow or the height of the Chrysler Building (1,046 feet), it’s clear that the voice-activated software is currently only…
In the news | TechCrunch
Changing the security landscape for entrepreneurs
Last year, Microsoft researchers smashed a homomorphic encryption speed barrier. While there is still work to be done, Kristin Lauter, a principal research manager at Microsoft, has said that initial results look very promising and that the technology could be…