Research manager Karin Strauss and members of the DNA Data Storage Project reflect on the path to developing a synthetic DNA–based system for archival data storage, including the recent open-source release of its most powerful algorithm for DNA error correction.Get the Trellis BMA code: GitHub - microsoft/TrellisBMA: Trellis BMA: coded trace reconstruction on IDS channels for DNA storage (https://github.com/microsoft/TrellisBMA)

The efficient simulation of molecules has the potential to change how the world understands biological systems and designs new drugs and biomaterials. Tong Wang discusses AI2BMD, an AI-based system designed to simulate large biomolecules with speed and accuracy.Read the paperGet the code

Researcher Siddharth Suri and professor David Holtz give a brief history of prompt engineering, discuss the debate behind their recent collaboration, and share what they found from studying how people’s approaches to prompting change as models advance.Learn more:* As Generative Models Improve, People Adapt Their Prompts (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/as-generative-models-improve-people-adapt-their-prompts/) | Publication, July 2024* AI, Cognition, and the Economy (AICE)...

Researchers Chris Hawblitzel and Jay Lorch share how progress in programming languages and verification approaches are bringing bug-free software within reach. Their work on the Rust verification tool Verus won the Distinguished Artifact Award at SOSP ’24.Read the paper

In their 2024 SOSP paper, researchers explore a common—though often undertested—software system issue: retry bugs. Research manager Shan Lu and PhD candidate Bogdan Stoica share how they’re combining traditional program analysis and LLMs to address the challenge.Read the paper

Every year, interns from academic institutions around the world apply and grow their knowledge as members of the research community at Microsoft. In this Microsoft Research Podcast series, these students join their internship supervisors to share their experience working alongside some of the leading researchers in their respective fields. In this episode, Angela Busheska (https://angelabusheska.com/), an undergraduate engineering student at Lafayette College, talks to Senior Researcher...

The personalizable object recognizer Find My Things was recently recognized for accessible design. Researcher Daniela Massiceti and software development engineer Martin Grayson talk about the research project’s origins and the tech advances making it possible.The Find My Things story is an example of research at Microsoft enhancing Microsoft products and services. To try the Find My Things tool, download the free, publicly available Seeing AI app.Learn more:* Find My Things: Personalized...

College freshman Dexter Greene and Microsoft research manager Richard Black discuss how technology that stores data in glass is supporting students as they expand earlier efforts to communicate what it means to be human to extraterrestrials.Learn more:* Avenues: The World School — Golden Record 2.0 (https://research.avenues.org/goldenrecord/)* Project homepage* Golden Record: Overview (https://science.nasa.gov/mission/voyager/voyager-golden-record-overview/)* NASA Science* Project Silica...

Model maker and fabricator Lex Story helps bring research to life through prototyping. He discusses his take on failure; the encouragement and advice that has supported his pursuit of art and science; and the sabbatical that might inspire his next career move.Learn more:* Microsoft Premonition...

In this episode, Microsoft Product Manager Shrey Jain (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/shreyjain/) and OpenAI Research Scientist Zoë Hitzig (https://www.zoehitzig.com/) join host Amber Tingle to discuss “Personhood credentials: Artificial intelligence and the value of privacy-preserving tools to distinguish who is real online.” In their paper, Jain, Hitzig, and their coauthors describe how malicious actors can draw on increasingly advanced AI tools to carry out deception,...

Researcher Brendan Lucier and professor Mert Demirer are applying their micro- and macroeconomic expertise, respectively, to forecasting the economic impact of AI. They share how they’re using a task-level breakdown of occupations to help predict the future.Learn more:* AI, Cognition, and the Economy (AICE) (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/collaboration/ai-cognition-and-the-economy-aice/) | Initiative page* Ideas: Designing AI for people with Abigail Sellen...

Emre Kiciman shares how some keen observations and a desire to have front-end impact led him to make the jump from systems and networking to computational social science and now causal analysis and large-scale AI—and how systems thinking still impacts his work.Learn more:* AI Controller Interface: Generative AI with a lightweight, LLM-integrated VM (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/ai-controller-interface-generative-ai-with-a-lightweight-llm-integrated-vm/) (blog)* AICI: Prompts...

A lack of appropriate data, decreased model performance, and other obstacles have made it difficult to expand the input language models can receive. Li Lyna Zhang introduces LongRoPE, a method capable of extending content windows to more than 2 million tokens.Read the paperGet the code

Senior Researcher Arindam Mitra introduces AgentInstruct. Using raw data sources, the automated multi-agent framework can create diverse, high-quality synthetic data at scale for the post-training of small and large language models.Read the paper

Printed circuit boards are abundant—in the stuff we use and in landfills. Researcher Jake Smith and professor Aniruddh Vashisth discuss the development of vitrimer-based PCBs that perform comparably to traditional PCBs but have less environmental impact.Learn more:* Recyclable vitrimer-based printed circuit boards for sustainable electronics (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/recyclable-vitrimer-based-printed-circuit-boards-for-sustainable-electronics/) | Nature...

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*...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 Rafah Hosn, partner group product manager for AI Frontiers at Microsoft Research. Hosn’s professional experience spans the gamut—from...

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 Research Software Engineer Tusher Chakraborty joins host Gretchen Huizinga to discuss “Spectrumize: Spectrum-efficient Satellite Networks for the Internet of Things,” which was accepted at the 2024 USENIX Symposium on Networked...

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 Kalika Bali. Inspired by an early vision of “talking computers” and a subsequent career in linguistics, Bali has...