Microsoft Research Podcast

Can we AI our way to a more sustainable world?

20 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Doug Burger, sustainability expert Amy Luers, and optimization researcher Ishai Menache examine the global emissions implications of datacenter operat...

Ideas: Steering AI toward the work future we want

09 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Microsoft Chief Scientist Jaime Teevan and researchers Jenna Butler, Jake Hofman, and Rebecca Janssen unpack the New Future of Work Report 2025 and ex...

Will machines ever be intelligent?

23 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Are machines truly intelligent? AI researchers Subutai Ahmad and Nicolò Fusi join Doug Burger to compare transformer-based AI with the human brain, e...

Trailer: The Shape of Things to Come

03 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Microsoft research lead Doug Burger introduces his new podcast series, The Shape of Things to Come, an exploration into the fundamental truths about ...

Ideas: Community building, machine learning, and the future of AI

01 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

As the Women in Machine Learning Workshop (WiML) marks its 20th annual gathering, cofounders, friends, and collaborators Jenn Wortman Vaughan and Hann...

Ideas: More AI-resilient biosecurity with the Paraphrase Project

06 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Microsoft’s Eric Horvitz and guests Bruce Wittmann, Tessa Alexanian, and James Diggans discuss the Paraphrase Project—a red-teaming effort that ex...

Coauthor roundtable: Reflecting on healthcare economics, biomedical research, and medical education

21 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For the series finale, Peter Lee, Carey Goldberg, and Dr. Zak Kohane compare their predictions to insights from the series’ most recent guests, incl...

Reimagining healthcare delivery and public health with AI

07 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Former Washington State Secretary of Health Dr. Umair Shah and Mayo Clinic CEO Dr. Gianrico Farrugia explore how healthcare leaders are approaching AI...

Navigating medical education in the era of generative AI

24 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Next-generation physicians Morgan Cheatham and Daniel Chen discuss how generative AI is transforming medical education, exploring how students and att...

AI Testing and Evaluation: Reflections

21 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the series finale, Amanda Craig Deckard returns to examine what Microsoft has learned about testing as a governance tool. She also explores the rol...

AI Testing and Evaluation: Learnings from cybersecurity

14 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Drawing on his previous work as the UK’s cybersecurity chief, Professor Ciaran Martin explores differentiated standards and public-private partnersh...

How AI will accelerate biomedical research and discovery

10 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Daphne Koller, Noubar Afeyan, and Dr. Eric Topol, leaders in AI-driven medicine, discuss how AI is changing biomedical research and discovery, from ac...

AI Testing and Evaluation: Learnings from pharmaceuticals and medical devices

07 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Professors Daniel Carpenter and Timo Minssen explore evolving pharma and medical device regulation, including the role of clinical trials, while Micro...

AI Testing and Evaluation: Learnings from genome editing

30 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Alta Charo, emerita professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, joins Sullivan for a conversation on the...

AI Testing and Evaluation: Learnings from Science and Industry

23 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In the introductory episode of this new series, host Kathleen Sullivan and Senior Director Amanda Craig Deckard explore Microsoft’s efforts to draw ...

The AI Revolution in Medicine, Revisited: How AI is reshaping the future of healthcare and medical research

12 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Technologists Bill Gates and Sébastien Bubeck discuss the state of generative AI in medicine, how access to “medical intelligence” might help emp...

What AI's impact on individuals means for the health workforce and industry

29 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Ethan Mollick and Azeem Azhar, thought leaders at the forefront of AI’s influence on work, education, and society, discuss the impact of AI at the i...

Abstracts: Zero-shot models in single-cell biology with Alex Lu

22 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The emergence of foundation models has sparked interest in applications to single-cell biology, but when tested in zero-shot settings, they underperfo...

Abstracts: Aurora with Megan Stanley and Wessel Bruinsma

21 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A new Nature paper explores Aurora, an AI model that redefines weather prediction with application to other environmental domains such as tropical cyc...

Collaborators: Healthcare Innovation to Impact

20 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this discussion, Matthew Lungren, Jonathan Carlson, Smitha Saligrama, Will Guyman, and Cameron Runde explore how teams across Microsoft are working...

Coauthor roundtable: Reflecting on real world of doctors, developers, patients, and policymakers

15 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Peter Lee and his coauthors, Carey Goldberg and Dr. Zak Kohane, reflect on how generative AI is unfolding in real-world healthcare, drawing on earlier...

Abstracts: Heat Transfer and Deep Learning with Hongxia Hao and Bing Lv

08 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Silicon has long borne the burden of heat transfer in electronics, but in a post-Moore’s Law world, researchers like Hongxia Hao and Bing Lv are usi...

Abstracts: Societal AI with Xing Xie

05 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

New AI models aren’t just changing the world of research; they’re also poised to impact society. Xing Xie talks about Societal AI, a white paper t...

The AI Revolution in Medicine, Revisited: Laws, norms, and ethics for AI in health

01 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Healthcare experts Laura Adams, Vardit Ravitsky, and Dr. Roxana Daneshjou discuss responsible AI implementation in medicine, examining governance appr...

The AI Revolution in Medicine, Revisited: Empowering patients and healthcare consumers in the age of generative AI

17 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Evangelist for patient empowerment Dave deBronkart and Manatt Heath’s Christina Farr discuss how generative AI is redefining healthcare by empowerin...

The AI Revolution in Medicine, Revisited: Real-world healthcare AI development and deployment—at scale

03 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Microsoft’s Dr. Matthew Lungren and Epic’s Seth Hain discuss the challenges and opportunities of leveraging generative AI for enhanced patient car...

Ideas: Accelerating Foundation Models Research: AI for all

31 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Innovative AI research often depends on access to resources. Microsoft wants to help. Technical Advisor Evelyne Viegas and distinguished faculty from ...

The AI Revolution in Medicine, Revisited: The reality of generative AI in the clinic

20 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

UC San Diego Health’s Dr. Christopher Longhurst and UC San Francisco Health’s Dr. Sara Murray explore how generative AI is changing patient care, ...

The AI Revolution in Medicine, Revisited: An Introduction

06 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Host Peter Lee, Microsoft Research president, discusses the motivation behind the new series and the GPT-4 encounter that helped him view the tech not...

Ideas: Quantum computing redefined with Chetan Nayak

19 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Microsoft announced the creation of the first topoconductor and first QPU architecture with a topological core. Dr. Chetan Nayak, a technical fellow o...

Ideas: Building AI for population-scale systems with Akshay Nambi

11 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, guest host Chris Stetkiewicz talks with Microsoft Principal Researcher Akshay Nambi about his focus on developing AI-driven technol...

Ideas: Bug hunting with Shan Lu

23 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Struggles with programming languages helped research manager Shan Lu find her calling as a bug hunter. She discusses one bug that really haunted her, ...

Ideas: AI for materials discovery with Tian Xie and Ziheng Lu

16 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

How do you generate and test materials that don’t exist yet? Researchers Tian Xie and Ziheng Lu share the story behind MatterGen and MatterSim, AI t...

Ideas: AI and democracy with Madeleine Daepp and Robert Osazuwa Ness

19 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

As the “biggest election year in history” comes to an end, researchers Madeleine Daepp and Robert Osazuwa Ness and Democracy Forward GM Ginny Bada...

NeurIPS 2024: The co-evolution of AI and systems with Lidong Zhou

17 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Just after his NeurIPS 2024 keynote on the co-evolution of systems and AI, Microsoft CVP Lidong Zhou joins the podcast to discuss how rapidly advancin...

NeurIPS 2024: AI for Science with Chris Bishop

13 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this special edition of the podcast, Technical Fellow and Microsoft Research AI for Science Director Chris Bishop joins guest host Eliza Strickland...

Abstracts: NeurIPS 2024 with Jindong Wang and Steven Euijong Whang

13 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Researcher Jindong Wang and Associate Professor Steven Euijong Whang explore the NeurIPS 2024 work ERBench. ERBench leverages relational databases to ...

Abstracts: NeurIPS 2024 with Weizhu Chen 

06 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Next-token prediction trains a language model on all tokens in a sequence. VP Weizhu Chen discusses his team’s 2024 NeurIPS paper on how distinguish...

Abstracts: NeurIPS 2024 with Dylan Foster

06 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Can existing algorithms designed for simple reinforcement learning problems be used to solve more complex RL problems? Researcher Dylan Foster discuss...

Abstracts: NeurIPS 2024 with Pranjal Chitale

06 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Pranjal Chitale discusses the 2024 NeurIPS work CVQA. Spanning 31 languages and the cultures of 30 countries, this VQA benchmark was created with nati...

Ideas: Economics and computation with Nicole Immorlica

05 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

When Senior Principal Research Manager Nicole Immorlica discovered she could use math to make the world a better place for people, she was all in. She...

Ideas: The journey to DNA data storage

19 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Research manager Karin Strauss and members of the DNA Data Storage Project reflect on the path to developing a synthetic DNA–based system for archiv...

Abstracts: November 14, 2024

14 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The efficient simulation of molecules has the potential to change how the world understands biological systems and designs new drugs and biomaterials....

Collaborators: Prompt engineering with Siddharth Suri and David Holtz

11 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Researcher Siddharth Suri and professor David Holtz give a brief history of prompt engineering, discuss the debate behind their recent collaboration, ...

Abstracts: November 5, 2024

05 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Researchers Chris Hawblitzel and Jay Lorch share how progress in programming languages and verification approaches are bringing bug-free software with...

Abstracts: November 4, 2024

04 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In their 2024 SOSP paper, researchers explore a common—though often undertested—software system issue: retry bugs. Research manager Shan Lu and Ph...

Intern Insights: Vaishnavi Ranganathan with Angela Busheska

24 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Every year, interns from academic institutions around the world apply and grow their knowledge as members of the research community at Microsoft. In t...

Abstracts: September 30, 2024

30 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The personalizable object recognizer Find My Things was recently recognized for accessible design. Researcher Daniela Massiceti and software developme...

Collaborators: Silica in space with Richard Black and Dexter Greene

05 Sep 2024

Contributed by Lukas

College freshman Dexter Greene and Microsoft research manager Richard Black discuss how technology that stores data in glass is supporting students as...

What’s Your Story: Lex Story

22 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Model maker and fabricator Lex Story helps bring research to life through prototyping. He discusses his take on failure; the encouragement and advice ...

Abstracts: August 15, 2024

16 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Microsoft Product Manager Shrey Jain and OpenAI Research Scientist Zoë Hitzig join host Amber Tingle to discuss “Personhood cre...

Collaborators: AI and the economy with Brendan Lucier and Mert Demirer

08 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Researcher Brendan Lucier and professor Mert Demirer are applying their micro- and macroeconomic expertise, respectively, to forecasting the economic ...

What’s Your Story: Emre Kiciman

01 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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 computati...

Abstracts: July 29, 2024

29 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

A lack of appropriate data, decreased model performance, and other obstacles have made it difficult to expand the input language models can receive. L...

Abstracts: July 18, 2024

18 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Senior Researcher Arindam Mitra introduces AgentInstruct. Using raw data sources, the automated multi-agent framework can create diverse, high-quality...

Collaborators: Sustainable electronics with Jake Smith and Aniruddh Vashisth

11 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Printed circuit boards are abundant—in the stuff we use and in landfills. Researcher Jake Smith and professor Aniruddh Vashisth discuss the developm...

Ideas: Solving network management puzzles with Behnaz Arzani

13 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Behnaz Arzani loves hard problems and the freedom to explore. That makes research a great fit! She discusses her work in network management, including...

What’s Your Story: Weishung Liu

30 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Principal PM Manager Weishung Liu shares how a career delivering products and customer experiences aligns with her love of people and storytelling and...

Ideas: Designing AI for people with Abigail Sellen

23 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Social scientist and HCI expert Abigail Sellen explores the critical understanding needed to build human-centric AI through the lens of the new AICE i...

Abstracts: May 20, 2024

20 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

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 dat...

What’s Your Story: Jacki O’Neill

16 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Jacki O'Neill saw an opportunity to expand Microsoft research efforts to Africa. She now leads Microsoft Research Africa, Nairobi (formerly MARI). O'N...

Abstracts: May 6, 2024

06 May 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Researcher Michel Galley explores how he and fellow researchers combined new and existing data to create MathVista, an open-source benchmark for measu...

Ideas: Exploring AI frontiers with Rafah Hosn

25 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Energized by disruption, partner group product manager Rafah Hosn is helping to drive scientific advancement in AI for Microsoft. She talks about the ...

Abstracts: April 16, 2024

16 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Tusher Chakraborty talks about the paper “Spectrumize: Spectrum-efficient Satellite Networks for the Internet of Things,” including a method for s...

Ideas: Language technologies for everyone with Kalika Bali

11 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

The new series “Ideas” debuts with guest Kalika Bali. The speech and language tech researcher talks sci-fi and its impact on her career, the desig...

AI Frontiers: Rethinking intelligence with Ashley Llorens and Ida Momennejad

28 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Principal Researcher Ida Momennejad brings her expertise in cognitive neuroscience and computer science to this in-depth conversation about general in...

Abstracts: March 21, 2024

21 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Senior Researcher Chang Liu discusses M-OFDFT, a variation of orbital-free density functional theory (OFDFT) that leverages deep learning to help iden...

Abstracts: February 29, 2024

29 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Can how we think about our thinking help us better incorporate generative AI in our lives & work? Explore metacognition’s potential to improve t...

What’s Your Story: Nicole Forsgren

15 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Partner Research Manager and developer experience expert Nicole Forsgren talks about the future of software engineering with AI, why she loves tech, a...

What’s Your Story: Ivan Tashev

01 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Partner Software Architect Ivan Tashev talks about applying his expertise in audio signal processing to the design and study of audio components for M...

Abstracts: January 25, 2024

25 Jan 2024

Contributed by Lukas

On “Abstracts,” Jordan Ash & Dipendra Misra discuss the parameter reduction method LASER. Tune in to learn how selective removal of stored dat...

AI Frontiers: A deep dive into deep learning with Ashley Llorens and Chris Bishop

18 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Powerful large-scale AI models like GPT-4 are showing dramatic improvements in reasoning, problem-solving, and language capabilities. This marks a pha...

Abstracts: December 12, 2023

12 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Members of the research community at Microsoft work continuously to advance their respective fields. Abstracts brings its audience to the cutting edge...

Abstracts: December 11, 2023

11 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Members of the research community at Microsoft work continuously to advance their respective fields. Abstracts brings its audience to the cutting edge...

Abstracts: December 6, 2023

06 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Members of the research community at Microsoft work continuously to advance their respective fields. Abstracts brings its audience to the cutting edge...

Collaborators: Teachable AI with Cecily Morrison and Karolina Pakėnaitė

05 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Transforming research ideas into meaningful impact is no small feat. It often requires the knowledge and experience of individuals from across discipl...

Abstracts: November 20, 2023

20 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Members of the research community at Microsoft work continuously to advance their respective fields. Abstracts brings its audience to the cutting edge...

What’s Your Story: Desney Tan

16 Nov 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this new Microsoft Research Podcast series What’s Your Story, Johannes Gehrke explores the who behind the technical and scientific advancements h...

Abstracts: October 23, 2023

23 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Members of the research community at Microsoft work continuously to advance their respective fields. Abstracts brings its audience to the cutting ed...

What’s Your Story: Ranveer Chandra

19 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

In this new Microsoft Research Podcast series What’s Your Story, Lab Director Johannes Gehrke explores the who behind the technical and scientific a...

Abstracts: October 9, 2023

09 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Members of the research community at Microsoft work continuously to advance their respective fields. Abstracts brings its audience to the cutting ed...

Intern Insights: Dr. Madeleine Daepp with Jennifer Scurrell and Alejandro Cuevas

05 Oct 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Every year, interns from academic institutions around the world apply and grow their knowledge as members of the research community at Microsoft. In t...

AI Frontiers: Measuring and mitigating harms with Hanna Wallach

28 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Powerful large-scale AI models like GPT-4 are showing dramatic improvements in reasoning, problem-solving, and language capabilities. This marks a pha...

AI Frontiers: The future of scale with Ahmed Awadallah and Ashley Llorens

14 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Powerful large-scale AI models like GPT-4 are showing dramatic improvements in reasoning, problem-solving, and language capabilities. This marks a pha...

Abstracts: September 13, 2023

13 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Members of the research community at Microsoft work continuously to advance their respective fields. Abstracts brings its audience to the cutting edge...

Intern Insights: Dr. Josh Benaloh with Anunay Kulshrestha and Karan Newatia

08 Sep 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Every year, interns from academic institutions around the world apply and grow their knowledge as members of the research community at Microsoft. In t...

AI Frontiers: AI in India and beyond with Sriram Rajamani

31 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Powerful large-scale AI models like GPT-4 are showing dramatic improvements in reasoning, problem-solving, and language capabilities. This marks a pha...

Collaborators: Project InnerEye with Javier Alvarez and Raj Jena

17 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Transforming research ideas into meaningful impact is no small feat. It often requires the knowledge and experience of individuals from across discipl...

Collaborators: Data-driven decision-making with Jina Suh and Shamsi Iqbal

03 Aug 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Transforming research ideas into meaningful impact is no small feat. It often requires the knowledge and experience of individuals from across discipl...

Collaborators: Gaming AI with Haiyan Zhang

20 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Transforming research ideas into meaningful impact is no small feat. It often requires the knowledge and experience of individuals from across discipl...

Collaborators: Holoportation™ communication technology with Spencer Fowers and Kwame Darko

06 Jul 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Transforming research ideas into meaningful impact is no small feat. It often requires the knowledge and experience of individuals from across discipl...

Collaborators: Renewable energy storage with Bichlien Nguyen and David Kwabi

22 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Transforming research ideas into meaningful impact is no small feat. It often requires the knowledge and experience of individuals from across discipl...

AI Frontiers: The future of causal reasoning with Emre Kiciman and Amit Sharma

08 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Powerful new large-scale AI models like GPT-4 are showing dramatic improvements in reasoning, problem-solving, and language capabilities. This marks a...

Collaborators: Gov4git with Petar Maymounkov and Kasia Sitkiewicz

03 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Transforming research ideas into meaningful impact is no small feat. It often requires the knowledge and experience of individuals from across discipl...

AI Frontiers: Models and Systems with Ece Kamar

13 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Powerful new large-scale AI models like GPT-4 are showing dramatic improvements in reasoning, problem-solving, and language capabilities. This marks a...

AI Frontiers: AI for health and the future of research with Peter Lee

30 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Powerful new large-scale AI models like GPT-4 are showing dramatic improvements in reasoning, problem-solving, and language capabilities. This marks a...

AI Frontiers: The Physics of AI with Sébastien Bubeck

23 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Powerful new large-scale AI models like GPT-4 are showing dramatic improvements in reasoning, problem-solving, and language capabilities. This marks a...

Collaborators: Gaming AI with Haiyan Zhang

19 Jul 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Transforming research ideas into meaningful impact is no small feat. It often requires the knowledge and experience of individuals from across discipl...

135 - Just Tech: Centering Community-Driven Innovation at the Margins Episode 3 with Dr. Sasha Costanza-Chock 

13 Apr 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In “Just Tech: Centering Community-Driven Innovation at the Margins,” Senior Principal Researcher Mary L. Gray explores how technology and communi...

134 - Just Tech: Centering Community-Driven Innovation at the Margins episode 2 with Dr. Tawanna Dillahunt, Zachary Rowe, and Joanna Velazquez

31 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

In “Just Tech: Centering Community-Driven Innovation at the Margins,” Senior Principal Researcher Mary Gray explores how technology and community ...