Microsoft Research Podcast

133 - Just Tech: Centering Community-Driven Innovation at the Margins episode 1 with Desmond Patton and Mary Gray

23 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 ...

132 - New Future of Work: How remote and hybrid work will shape workplaces and society with Jaime Teevan and Sid Suri

12 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

For Microsoft researchers, COVID-19 was a call to action. The reimagining of work practices had long been an area of study, but existing and new quest...

131 - New Future of Work: Redefining workspaces as hybrid and remote work become more prevalent with Jaime Teevan and Ginger Hudson

04 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

For Microsoft researchers, COVID-19 was a call to action. The reimagining of work practices had long been an area of study, but existing and new quest...

130 - New Future of Work: Managing IT and security in remote scenarios with Jaime Teevan and Matt Brodsky

29 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

For Microsoft researchers, COVID-19 was a call to action. The reimagining of work practices had long been an area of study, but existing and new quest...

129 - Machine learning, molecular simulation, and the opportunity for societal good with Chris Bishop and Max Welling

20 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Unlocking the challenge of molecular simulation has the potential to yield significant breakthroughs in how we tackle such societal issues as climate ...

128 - New Future of Work: How developer collaboration and productivity are changing in a hybrid work model

14 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

For Microsoft researchers, COVID-19 was a call to action. The reimagining of work practices had long been an area of study, but existing and new quest...

127 - New Future of Work: Staying productive and happy when our office is our home with Jaime Teevan and Sonia Jaffe

07 Jul 2021

Contributed by Lukas

For Microsoft researchers, COVID-19 was a call to action. The reimagining of work practices had long been an area of study, but existing and new quest...

126 - New Future of Work: Meeting and collaborating in a remote and hybrid world with Jaime Teevan and Abigail Sellen

30 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

For Microsoft researchers, COVID-19 was a call to action. The reimagining of work practices had long been an area of study, but existing and new quest...

125 - New Future of Work: Driving innovation via cross-company research with Jaime Teevan and Brent Hecht

24 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

For Microsoft researchers, COVID-19 was a call to action. The reimagining of work practices had long been an area of study, but existing and new quest...

124 - Econ4: Uncovering how decision-making shapes individuals and society through behavioral public economics featuring Evan Rose and Hunt Allcott

16 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the world of economics, researchers at Microsoft are examining a range of complex systems—from those that impact the technologies we use to those...

123 - Econ3: Understanding the media ecosystem and how it informs public opinion in the internet age featuring Hunt Allcott and David Rothschild

10 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the world of economics, researchers at Microsoft are examining a range of complex systems—from those that impact the technologies we use to those...

122 - Econ2: Causal machine learning, data interpretability, and online platform markets featuring Hunt Allcott and Greg Lewis

02 Jun 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the world of economics, researchers at Microsoft are examining a range of complex systems—from those that impact the technologies we use ...

121 - Econ1: Using microeconomics to solve mass incarceration featuring Hunt Allcott and Evan Rose

19 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

In the world of economics, researchers at Microsoft are examining a range of complex systems—from those that impact the technologies we use to those...

120 - Advancing Excel as a programming language with Andy Gordon and Simon Peyton Jones

05 May 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Today, people around the globe—from teachers to small-business owners to finance executives—use Microsoft Excel to make sense of the information t...

119 - Defending DRAM for data safety and security in the cloud

08 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dynamic random-access memory – or DRAM – is the most popular form of volatile computer memory in the world but it’s particularly susceptible to ...

118 - Accessible systems for sign language computation with Dr. Danielle Bragg

17 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Many computer science researchers set their sights on building general AI technologies that could impact hundreds of millions – or even billions –...

117 - Provably efficient reinforcement learning with Dr. Akshay Krishnamurthy

03 Jun 2020

Contributed by Lukas

MSR’s New York City lab is home to some of the best reinforcement learning research on the planet but if you ask any of the researchers, they’ll t...

116 - Harvesting randomness, HAIbrid algorithms and safe AI with Dr. Siddhartha Sen

27 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Siddhartha Sen is a Principal Researcher in MSR’s New York City lab, and his research interests are, if not impossible, at least impossible soun...

036r - A conversation with Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott

20 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This episode originally aired in August, 2018. Kevin Scott has embraced many roles over the course of his illustrious career in technology: software ...

115 - Diving into Deep InfoMax with Dr. Devon Hjelm

13 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Devon Hjelm is a senior researcher at the Microsoft Research lab in Montreal, and today, he joins me to dive deep into his research on Deep InfoMa...

080r - All Data AI with Dr. Andrew Fitzgibbon

06 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This episode originally aired in June, 2019 You may not know who Dr. Andrew Fitzgibbon is, but if you’ve watched a TV show or movie in the last two...

020r - Getting good VIBEs from your computer with Dr. Mary Czerwinski

29 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This episode originally aired in April, 2018 Emotions are fundamental to human interaction, but in a world where humans are increasingly interacting ...

072r - AI for Earth with Dr. Lucas Joppa

22 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This episode originally aired in April, 2019. We hear a lot these days about “AI for good” and the efforts of many companies to harness the power...

004r - Getting Virtual with Dr. Mar Gonzalez Franco

15 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This episode originally aired in December, 2017 On today’s episode, neuroscientist and virtual reality researcher, Dr. Mar Gonzalez Franco, talks a...

114 - Project Orleans and the distributed database future with Dr. Philip Bernstein

08 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Forty years ago, database research was an “exotic” field and, because of its business data processing reputation, was not considered intellectuall...

113 - An interview with Microsoft President Brad Smith

01 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Brad Smith is the President of Microsoft and leads a team of more than 1400 employees in 56 countries. He plays a key role in spearheading the company...

112 - Microsoft’s AI Transformation, Project Turing and smarter search with Rangan Majumder

25 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Rangan Majumder is the Partner Group Program Manager of Microsoft’s Search and AI, and he has a simple goal: to make the world smarter and more prod...

111 - Auto ML and the future of self-managing networks with Dr. Behnaz Arzani

18 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Behnaz Arzani is a senior researcher in the Mobility and Networking group at MSR, and she feels your pain. At least, that is, if you’re a networ...

110 - Engineering research to life with Gavin Jancke

11 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

If you want an inside look at how a research idea goes from project to prototype to product, you should hang out with Gavin Jancke for a while. He’s...

109 - AI, Azure and the future of healthcare with Dr. Peter Lee

04 Mar 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Over the past decade, the healthcare industry has undergone a series of technological changes in an effort to modernize it and bring it into the dig...

108 - Neural architecture search, imitation learning and other ML “defense against the dark arts” techniques with Dr. Debadeepta Dey

26 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Debadeepta Dey is a Principal Researcher in the Adaptive Systems and Interaction group at MSR and he’s currently exploring several lines of rese...

107 - Democratizing data, thinking backwards and setting North Star goals with Dr. Donald Kossmann

19 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Donald Kossmann is a Distinguished Scientist who thinks big, and as the Director of Microsoft Research’s flagship lab in Redmond, it’s his job...

106 - Microsoft Scheduler and dawn of Intelligent PDAs with Dr. Pamela Bhattacharya

12 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In a world where productivity is paramount and only a handful of people have personal assistants, many of us are frustrated by the amount of time we s...

105 - Responsible AI with Dr. Saleema Amershi

05 Feb 2020

Contributed by Lukas

There’s an old adage that says if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. But when it comes to AI, Dr. Saleema Amershi, a principal researcher in the Ad...

104 - Going deep on deep learning with Dr. Jianfeng Gao

29 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Jianfeng Gao is a veteran computer scientist, an IEEE Fellow and the current head of the Deep Learning Group at Microsoft Research. He and his tea...

103 - Innovating in India with Dr. Sriram Rajamani

22 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Sriram Rajamani is a Distinguished Scientist and the Managing Director of the Microsoft Research lab in Bangalore. He’s dedicated his career to ...

078r - Machine teaching with Dr. Patrice Simard

15 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This episode originally aired in May, 2019. Machine learning is a powerful tool that enables computers to learn by observing the world, recognizing p...

077r - The productive software engineer with Dr. Tom Zimmermann

08 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This episode originally aired in May, 2019. If you’re in software development, Dr. Tom Zimmermann, a senior researcher at Microsoft Research in Red...

075r - Reinforcement learning for the real world with Dr. John Langford and Rafah Hosn

01 Jan 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This episode originally aired in May, 2019.Dr. John Langford, a partner researcher in the Machine Learning group at Microsoft Research New York City, ...

053r - Chasing convex bodies and other random topics with Dr. Sébastien Bubeck

25 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Sébastien Bubeck is a mathematician and a senior researcher in the Machine Learning and Optimization group at Microsoft Research. He’s also a s...

052r - Chris Bishop

18 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

This episode first aired in November, 2018. Dr. Christopher Bishop is quite a fellow. Literally. Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Fellow o...

102 - Adaptive systems, machine learning and collaborative AI with Dr. Besmira Nushi

11 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

With all the buzz surrounding AI, it can be tempting to envision it as a stand-alone entity that optimizes for accuracy and displaces human capabiliti...

101 - Going meta: learning algorithms and the self-supervised machine with Dr. Philip Bachman

04 Dec 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Deep learning methodologies like supervised learning have been very successful in training machines to make predictions about the world. But because t...

100 - Autonomous systems, aerial robotics and Game of Drones with Gurdeep Pall and Dr. Ashish Kapoor

27 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

There’s a lot of excitement around self-driving cars, delivery drones, and other intelligent, autonomous systems, but before they can be deployed at...

099 - Program synthesis and the art of programming by intent with Dr. Sumit Gulwani

20 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Sumit Gulwani is a programmer’s programmer. Literally. A Partner Research Manager in the Program Synthesis, or PROSE, group at Microsoft Researc...

098 - Hacking the runway with MakeCode with Dr. Thomas Ball and Dr. Teddy Seyed

13 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Computer programming has often been perceived as the exclusive domain of computer scientists and software engineers. But that’s changing, thanks to ...

097- Optics for the cloud: storage in the zettabyte era with Dr. Ant Rowstron and Mark Russinovich

06 Nov 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Remember when a hard drive that could hold a terabyte of data was a big deal? Well, we’re now in an era where peta-, exa- and even zetta-bytes are t...

096 - Art + Architecture + AI = Ada with Jenny Sabin and Asta Roseway

30 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Jenny Sabin is an architectural designer, a professor, a studio principal and MSR’s current Artist in Residence. Asta Roseway is a principal researc...

095 - Machine teaching, LUIS and the democratization of custom AI with Dr. Riham Mansour

23 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Machine learning is a powerful tool that enables conversational agents to provide general question-answer services. But in domains with more specific ...

094 - News from the front in the post-quantum crypto wars with Dr. Craig Costello

16 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Craig Costello is in the business of safeguarding your secrets. And he uses math to do it. A researcher in the Security and Cryptography group at ...

093 - Data science and ML for human well-being with Jina Suh

09 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Using technology to help us improve our health is nothing new: a quick web search returns hundreds of apps and devices claiming to help us get fit, qu...

092 - MMLSpark: empowering AI for Good with Mark Hamilton

02 Oct 2019

Contributed by Lukas

If someone asked you what snow leopards and Vincent Van Gogh have in common, you might think it was the beginning of a joke. It’s not, but if it wer...

091 - Inside AR and VR, a technical tour of the reality spectrum with Dr. Eyal Ofek

25 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Eyal Ofek is a senior researcher at Microsoft Research and his work deals mainly with, well, reality. Augmented and virtual reality, to be precise...

090 - HCI, IR and the search for better search with Dr. Susan Dumais

18 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Susan Dumais knows you have things to do, and if you need help finding stuff to get them done (and you probably do) then her long and illustrious ...

089 - Inside the Microsoft AI Residency Program with Dr. Brian Broll

11 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In 2018, Microsoft launched the Microsoft AI Residency Program, a year-long, expanded research experience designed to give recent graduates in a varie...

088 - ICT4D… and 4U! with Dr. Ed Cutrell

04 Sep 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Ed Cutrell is a Principal Researcher in the Ability group at Microsoft Research and he’s convinced that great technology should be available to ...

087 - HE compilers for Private AI and other game changers with Dr. Olli Saarikivi

28 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

As computing moves to the cloud, there is an increasing need for privacy in AI. In an ideal world, users would have the ability to compute on encrypte...

086 - Machine reading comprehension with Dr. T.J. Hazen

21 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The ability to read and understand unstructured text, and then answer questions about it, is a common skill among literate humans. But for machines? N...

085 - Live video analytics and research as Test Cricket with Dr. Ganesh

14 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In an era of unprecedented advances in AI and machine learning, current gen systems and networks are being challenged by an unprecedented level of com...

084 - Beautiful data with Dr. Nathalie Riche

07 Aug 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Nathalie Riche envisions a future in which all of our data will be accessible, meaningful, compelling and artistic. And as a researcher in human c...

007r - Functional Programming Languages and the Pursuit of Laziness with Dr. Simon Peyton Jones

31 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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 c...

015r - Brokering Peace Talks in the Networking and Storage Arms Race with Dr. Anirudh Badam

24 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

This episode first aired in March, 2018. There’s a big gap between memory and storage, and Dr. Anirudh Badam, of the Systems Research Group at Micro...

083 - Making the future of work work for you with Dr. Johannes Gehrke

17 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Johannes Gehrke is a Microsoft Technical Fellow and head of Architecture and Machine Learning for the Intelligent Communications and Conversations...

001r - Snippets from the Revolution – An Interview with Dr. Jaime Teevan

10 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

This episode first aired in November, 2017 - Dr. Jaime Teevan has a lot to say about productivity in a fragmented culture, and some solutions that see...

009r - Life at the Intersection of AI and Society with Dr. Ece Kamar

03 Jul 2019

Contributed by Lukas

This episode first aired in January, 2018. As the reality of artificial intelligence continues to capture our imagination, and critical AI systems ent...

082 - The brave new world of cloud-scale systems and networking with Dr. Lidong Zhou

26 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

If you’re like me, you’re no longer amazed by how all your technologies can work for you. Rather, you’ve begun to take for granted that they sim...

081 - Game on with Dr. Chris Bishop and Phil Spencer

19 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Chris Bishop is a Microsoft Technical Fellow and director of MSR Cambridge, where he oversees an impressive portfolio of research including machin...

080 - All Data AI with Dr. Andrew Fitzgibbon

12 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

You may not know who Dr. Andrew Fitzgibbon is, but if you’ve watched a TV show or movie in the last two decades, you’ve probably seen some of his ...

079 - Making the most of micro-moments with Dr. Shamsi Iqbal

05 Jun 2019

Contributed by Lukas

If you’ve recently found it more difficult to focus your attention for a lengthy stretch of time in order to get a complex task done… or worse, fo...

078 - Machine teaching with Dr. Patrice Simard

29 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Machine learning is a powerful tool that enables computers to learn by observing the world, recognizing patterns and self-training via experience. Muc...

077 - The productive software engineer with Dr. Tom Zimmermann

22 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

If you’re in software development, Dr. Tom Zimmermann, a senior researcher at Microsoft Research in Redmond, wants you to be more productive, and he...

076 - Speech and language: the crown jewel of AI with Dr. Xuedong Huang

15 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

When was the last time you had a meaningful conversation with your computer… and felt like it truly understood you? Well, if Dr. Xuedong Huang, a Mi...

075 - Reinforcement learning for the real world with Dr. John Langford and Rafah Hosn

08 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. John Langford, a partner researcher in the Machine Learning group at Microsoft Research New York City, is a reinforcement learning expert who is w...

074 - CHI squared with Dr. Ken Hinckley and Dr. Meredith Ringel Morris

01 May 2019

Contributed by Lukas

If you want to know what’s going on in the world of human computer interaction research, or what’s new at the CHI Conference on Human Factors in C...

073 - Froid and the relational database query quandry with Dr. Karthik Ramachandra

24 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

In the world of relational databases, structured query language, or SQL, has long been King of the Queries, primarily because of its ubiquity and unpa...

072 - AI for Earth with Dr. Lucas Joppa

17 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

We hear a lot these days about “AI for good” and the efforts of many companies to harness the power of artificial intelligence to solve some of ou...

071 - Holograms, spatial anchors and the future of computer vision with Dr. Marc Pollefeys

10 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

  Dr. Marc Pollefeys is a Professor of Computer Science at ETH Zurich, a Partner Director of Science for Microsoft, and the Director of a new Micros...

070 - Enabling design with Ann Paradiso

03 Apr 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Ann Paradiso is an interaction designer and the Principal User Experience Designer for the NExT Enable group at Microsoft Research. She’s also the e...

069 - All about automated machine learning with Dr. Nicolo Fusi

27 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

This episode first aired in September, 2018: You may have heard the phrase, necessity is the mother of invention, but for Dr. Nicolo Fusi, a research...

068 - Project Triton and the physics of sound with Dr. Nikunj Raghuvanshi

20 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

If you’ve ever played video games, you know that for the most part, they look a lot better than they sound. That’s largely due to the fact that au...

067 - Programming biology with Dr. Andrew Phillips

13 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

When we think of information processing systems, we often think of computers, but we ourselves are made up of information processing systems – trill...

066 (rerun) - Cryptography for the post-quantum world with Dr. Brian LaMacchia

06 Mar 2019

Contributed by Lukas

This episode first aired in August of 2018. You know those people who work behind the scenes to make sure nothing bad happens to you, and if they’r...

065 - Securing the vote with Dr. Josh Benaloh

27 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

If you’ve ever wondered why, in the age of the internet, we still don’t hold our elections online, you need to spend more time with Dr. Josh Benal...

064 - Talking with machines with Dr. Layla El Asri

20 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Humans are unique in their ability to learn from, understand the world through and communicate with language… Or are they? Perhaps not for long, if ...

063 - Competing in the X Games of machine learning with Dr. Manik Varma

13 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

If every question in life could be answered by choosing from just a few options, machine learning would be pretty simple, and life for machine learnin...

062 - Putting the “human” in human computer interaction with Haiyan Zhang

06 Feb 2019

Contributed by Lukas

Haiyan Zhang is a designer, technologist and maker of things (really cool technical things) who currently holds the unusual title of Innovation Direct...

061 - Enable(ing) people to do more with Dr. Rico Malvar

30 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

From his deep technical roots as a principal researcher and founder of the Communications, Collaboration and Signal Processing group at MSR, through h...

060 - Empowering people with AI with Dr. Cecily Morrison

23 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

You never know how an incident in your own life might inspire a breakthrough in science, but Dr. Cecily Morrison, a researcher in the Human Computer I...

059 - Building contextually intelligent assistants with Dr. Paul Bennett

16 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

The entertainment industry has long offered us a vision of the perfect personal assistant: one that not only meets our stated needs but anticipates ne...

058 - Scaling the Everest of software security with Dr. Jonathan Protzenko

09 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

When people first started making software, computers were relatively rare and there was no internet, so programming languages were designed to get the...

057 (rerun) - Making intelligence intelligible with Dr. Rich Caruana

02 Jan 2019

Contributed by Lukas

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...

056 (rerun) - Functional Programming Languages and the Pursuit of Laziness with Dr. Simon Peyton Jones

26 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

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 co...

055 (rerun) - Building Literate Machines with Dr. Adam Trischler

19 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

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....

054 - Soundscaping the world with Amos Miller

12 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

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 inno...

053 - Chasing convex bodies and other random topics with Dr. Sebastien Bubeck

05 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Sebastien Bubeck is a mathematician and a senior researcher in the Machine Learning and Optimization group at Microsoft Research. He’s also a se...

052 - Machine learning and the learning machine with Dr. Christopher Bishop

28 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Christopher Bishop is quite a fellow. Literally. Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Fellow of Darwin College in Cambridge, England. Fello...

051 (rerun) - When Psychology Meets Technology with Dr. Daniel McDuff

21 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

This episode first aired in March (2018)One of the most intriguing areas of machine learning research is affective computing, where scientists are wor...

050 - Hearing in 3D with Dr. Ivan Tashev

14 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

After decades of research in processing audio signals, we’ve reached the point of so-called performance saturation. But recent advances in machine l...

049 - Celebrating 20 Years of MSR in Asia with Dr. Hsiao-Wuen Hon

07 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

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 on...

048 - Storing Digital Data in Synthetic DNA with Dr. Karin Strauss

31 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

As traditional semiconductor technologies for computer storage scale down, everyone is looking for alternative solutions to the growing gap between th...