>> Hello and good
morning and welcome.
Welcome to Sunny Redmond.
It's summer in Seattle.
You can tell the rains
a little bit warmer.
Welcome to Microsoft
and more importantly
welcome to the Microsoft
Research Faculty Summit.
I am delighted to be
your host here for
the next couple of days and
the emcee for your event.
I was delighted actually
to see many of you at
the welcome reception last night.
I hope you had a chance to
enjoy that as much as I did.
Meeting some new people,
renewing some old acquaintances.
I hope that that's the start of
a really wonderful experience for
us all over the next two days.
I'm Sandy Blyth, I run the outreach
for research at Microsoft.
Around the world outreach
people or programs
and resources are
intended to create and
maintain a really
collaborative rich environment
where Microsoft and academia
can work together on
research areas of
interest in advance
the state of the art,
and that's really
foundational to helping
Microsoft and Microsoft Research
achieve the vision for MSR,
which is to be
a basic open research facility
in the best academic traditions.
You know us, we publish openly.
We published more than any industrial
technology lab in the world.
We publish in peer reviewed journals
and at top conferences.
We make our datasets available
for transparency and reproducibility.
I'd encourage you to
become familiar with
MSRs open data repository
where we make many of
those MSR datasets
available as well as
the recently announced Azure
open datasets for
more public datasets,
and in publishing, the majority of
our papers are done with
an external academic collaborator.
So it truly is the best
academic tradition that we
hold ourselves to in helping to
advance the state of the art.
I'm very excited to have here.
We've also got some press who
will be joining us over
the next couple of days.
So you're aware.
But Faculty Summit has really
been a year in the planning,
and because of the dependency
and the engagement that
we have with academia,
it's a special event for us.
It's something that we look forward
to throughout the course of the year.
It's a special event
because we get to
renew old acquaintances and
get to meet some new people.
We have a group of attendees
about 250 external academics
and researchers from
around the world.
We've got attendees from
20 countries around the world
about 125 institutions.
So a really rich diversity
of thought and
experience that I think makes
this a really unique event.
It's also a special anniversary
for us with the Faculty Summit.
This is our 20th faculty summit
that we've done here in Redmond,
and so it's an opportunity
not only for us to
look forward topically
with the future of work,
but also to look back over
the past 20 years that we
have done work together.
You've seen we have
some special guests later
on tonight/ as our closing talk
we'll have an opportunity to
have a conversation
with Bill Gates who is
the founder of Microsoft and
really the chief sponsor of MSR
who made a remarkable commitment
to long-term research
when it's a little company
with a challenging purpose,
and it's remarkable
that we have been able
to sustain that
investment at Microsoft
and with each of you and I'm
excited for us to all have
a chance to hear from Bill
as not only he looks back,
but looks forward on some of the
topics of interest for us all.
The summertime here is the time
that's super busy for all of you,
and I recognize that you've
got a lot of demands,
a lot of options that you
can spend your time with,
and so we're really grateful
that you've chosen to spend
your time with us over the next
two days here at Faculty Summit.
Please do let any of
the Microsoft team know if
there's anything that we can
do to make this the best experience
that we can for you.
The agenda is crafted with your
feedback in mind from the topic,
the future of work to the way
we lay out the agenda.
So we have keynote speakers
from both Microsoft and
from outside institutions
to give broad overviews.
We've got some breakout sessions
that allow us to go
deep on more specific topics.
We've got plenty of
time for networking.
One of the best feedback
that we get from attendees
is that they really
appreciate the chance to
network with peers who
have an interest in
common research topics to expand
their networks and to
gain the access to
some really interesting feedback
and challenging ideas.
We've limited the attendance so we
can make it a little bit
more of an intimate event.
So in addition to
about 250 external attendees,
we'll have probably about
100-150 Microsoft people
who will be here over the course
of the next two days.
Those are Microsoft researchers,
research leaders,
and research and technology leaders
from our product groups as well,
and I hope you have
the opportunity to engage
with them to hear about what
we're doing and also to give them
the opportunity to hear
about what you are doing.
It's a super-exciting time
for us to focus on this topic,
the future of work.
There is so much going on
and not just in technology.
There are all the attendant
changes as a result of
productivity technology
advances on policy,
regulation, ethics and education.
It's truly a momentous time,
and one of the reasons that
we were so excited to pick
the topic of the future of work
for this year's faculty summit.
So let's get to work. Here's
a quick snapshot of the agenda.
Well, we've got a keynote this
morning that I'm super-excited.
We have Jamie Tvan from Microsoft
and Gloria Mark from UC Irvine,
who will be here to get us started.
You can see how the agenda flows.
We'll be going into
breakout sessions immediately across
the hallway for topics as we
go along through the day.
You'll be able to
find your way back to
lunch where we had
breakfast this morning.
Also tomorrow you'll see across
approximate to where we
were having breakfast is
a technology showcase which will have
27 different booths
highlighting some of
the relevant research and researchers
at MSR that we have ongoing.
I'll talk more about
that a little bit later,
but lots of breakout
sessions that gives
you the freedom and flexibility to
choose some topics
that you would find
interesting and to engage
in a more intimate way.
We also try and turn this into
a fun and enjoyable social
and networking event.
So you can see after we have
our conversation with Bill,
later today we've got
an opportunity to head
downtown Seattle for dinner at
the two Chihuly Gardens and glass in
a special surprise experienced
that I'll describe in just a moment.
You may have seen on
the agenda for lunch today we
have something that we
call One Table One Topic.
You might be wondering what that is.
Well, we have senior researchers
and technology exacts
from our product groups
who've been signed up
to facilitate a conversation
around topics of interests.
This is completely optional thing,
but if you see a topic or
an individual there that you'd
like to get to know better
or you just want to
talk amongst peers over
lunch on something
of common interest,
go ahead and look for
the little notice on the tables
and have a seat and join
your peers for a conversation
of focused around those things.
Again it's optional. If you'd
like just have a seat and
enjoy a nice lunch with
your peers before we come back
for the breakout sessions.
One Table One Topic
though is historically
been a really popular
element to our agenda,
and I encourage you to
consider that as you like.
You'll also see throughout
the day here in the main content,
you saw it hopefully at breakfast.
You'll see them on the monitors,
in the hallway, what we call
a researcher spotlight.
This again is just another way as we
have a very diverse audience
of attendees for you to
get to know both
the research interests and
a little bit about the people
who are in attendance here.
This is a fun way for us to
introduce ourselves to each other.
If you haven't seen
Gloria Mark's researcher spotlight,
I won't steal the surprise,
but I will say that my esteem
for this woman knows
no bounds and you'll see
a researcher spotlight fun
fact in a little while.
As I say at dinner tonight,
if you have never been to
the to Chihuly Gardens,
it's a really special experience.
Even those of us from Seattle who
have the opportunity to go to
the artist's location and sees is
just the remarkable work
that Chihuly and his
students have produced.
It's a really fun
experience in addition to
being a delightful
location for dinner.
So I'm excited for us
to hop on the buses
at the end of today and go
down for a special experience.
If you've not been there before,
it's super, and if you have,
you'll know how good it
is and I hope you enjoy
an opportunity to revisit
the Chihuly Garden.
As a special experience,
we're delighted to let you
know that after dinner,
we'll have some
opportunities to head up to
the refurbished Seattle Space Needle
and have an opportunity for
a private viewing of what I hope is
some clearer skies in
the Seattle skyline.
It's a just a breathtaking 360
degree view of the Emerald City,
and there's a newly
installed glass floor.
If you've got the nerve,
I don't, to look down.
I understand it's a very
exciting view from up there,
but we'll have three shifts
after dinner one at 9,
one at 9:30, and one at 10 o'clock.
If you'd love to go do that it's
a really fun experience.
Don't look down.
We'll have buses leaving
right at the end of dinner,
but the last bus I'll
say leaves at 10:45.
If you miss the last bus at 10:45,
welcome to Seattle. We do have over.
I do want to take a moment just to
refresh and introduce perhaps some of
our existing fellowships
and grants programs that
MSR runs as well as introduce
some new programs that you
might not be familiar with.
I'll start with
our research fellows program
that is managed out of our
India Lab in Bangalore.
We have a number of academics who
made the long flight from India.
Thank you very much. I'm
grateful to have you here.
Looking forward to being back
for the academic summit that we
co-host with ACM India at
the end of January this year.
So thank you for making the trip.
The fellows program gives
pre-doctoral students
the opportunity to come in and
spend one to two years in our labs.
It's a cash stipend but they
also have the opportunity to
work in the Bangalore Lab next to
Microsoft researchers and gain
some real-world experience
that they can take into
the early part of their PhD
program and their research careers.
It has a long tradition of producing
some really outstanding research
as that lab does in systems,
in theories, in
low resource environments,
as well as supporting a new center
that Outreach and MSR
India have launched
around social impact of Cloud and AI
technologies that we're very excited
to have people contribute to.
There is a new
fellowship that we just
recently announced here
in North America called
the Ada Lovelace Fellowship in
honor of Countess of Lovelace.
Really, the world's first
computer programmer.
A woman who recognized the potential
of the Babbage machine.
It is intended to help
foster the development of
a more diverse community of
students that are pursuing
their PhDs in North America,
and it recognizes that there are
some special systematic
or systemic obstacles.
So it's an extension of our
traditional PhD scholarship program.
It is a three-year program
of full tuition
of $42,000 annual stipend.
You can see the
inaugural class that we
awarded here in 2019 as well
as the dates for call for nominations
for the next Ada Lovelace
Scholarship round.
If you go to Microsoft.com/research
and look for the drop-down
box Programs and Events.
But we're very excited to have really
an upgraded fellowship program
aimed at underrepresented groups
in computer science.
As I mentioned, we do
have and will continue
with our traditional research PhD.
fellowship. This is a two-year
program here in North America.
Many of you have students I'm sure
that have been recipients or are
currently recipients of that.
Again, the next date for the call
for nominations for the PhD.
fellowship is on the website.
Our MSR Asia lab,
currently headquartered
in Beijing with
an expanded Lab that will be
opening at the end of
Summer in Shanghai.
So we're very excited about.
Thank you for, I think,
about 35 attendees from
the Asia region have joined us
here today in the faculty summit.
Thank you for making the long trip.
This is both a cash and
an experiential opportunity,
where they not only get
a stipend but they have again,
the opportunity for
an optional internship,
attendance at things like
the Asia Faculty Summit
and academic environment,
as well as some mentorship
and some travel stipend.
So again, a very rich holistic
approach to enabling technology,
leadership, and entrepreneurs
out of our Asia region.
We have a dissertation grant.
This is meant to get that final push
across the line for people,
especially in underrepresented groups
to get their terminal degree.
So frequently, it's that last mile,
it's so hard to get your dissertation
completed and presented
and win your degree.
So this is a cash stipend that
helps get that individual
across the line and into
either an academic or
industrial research career.
We have in addition to
some new scholarships,
we brought back some old
fellowships that were very popular.
Really in looking back at the
history of the Faculty Fellowship,
we saw some remarkable
talent that has gone
on to do some fantastic
research work,
and it was very
inspiring for us to see
what our support early in
career had been able to do,
and we're delighted to have
brought that back again this year.
So the Microsoft Research Faculty
Fellowship is a two-year,
a $100,000 per year grant
to those early in career,
much like an NSF Career Award
to help them get
started on what we believe will be
a really promising and
impactful research career.
I'm delighted if you haven't
seen this was the first class
of the renewed Faculty
Fellowship that we
made awards to earlier this year.
If you know them, when you
see them, congratulate them.
We are thrilled to be
associated with young
researchers of this caliber.
There's also a new fellowship
from our education team in Microsoft.
We call it the
Investigator Fellowship.
It is also two years,
a $100,000 each year.
It's intended to support
researchers and educators
who are using Azure
in interesting ways
for their research
and educational purposes.
Again, that's new.
It's not a Microsoft
Research Fellowship.
It's from our education group,
and we're delighted to be
doing the first call for
that Investigator
Fellowship here shortly.
Then finally, as we do in all of
the other regions that we
operate around the world,
we have our scholarship program
in EMEA for Europe,
Middle East and Africa.
This is centered on
Research Lab in Cambridge, UK.
The first lab that we opened
outside of the United States.
It too is a three-year scholarship,
a travel, and living stipend,
and includes the opportunity
to have a mentor and
collaborations with the research
team in our Cambridge, UK Lab.
So really a very exciting lineup
of fellowships and grants
that I hope you'll
take the time to get familiar with
and encourage your students or
other young faculty that
you're familiar with
to take a look at and evaluate.
It has a tremendous history.
We hope that it is
just part of the environment
that we can create that creates
a really rich and
collaborative partnership
between MSR and academia.
There's clearly a lot
else going on with MSR.
The questions I frequently get about,
"Hey, how do I keep up
with all that's going on?"
Hopefully, online is
a great way for us keep up.
I've already mentioned the website,
Microsoft.com/research,
where you can see everything
that we've going on across
the programs in MSR labs
around the world.
We have a podcast series,
which has proven to be very popular.
It helps you to get to know the
individuals behind the research as
well as the path that
has brought them to
MSR in their areas of investigation.
We're starting to do those
actually now jointly between
Microsoft researchers and
their academic partners
or their advisors,
which is a lot of fun to
extend the journey and
include our academic collaborators
in the podcast series.
But Facebook, Instagram,
Twitter, there's
lots of ways to stay
in contact with us.
There's an MSR newsletter that I
hope you'll take the opportunity to
subscribe to as well as
the MSR blog and our AI blog.
So hopefully, lots of ways to
keep up-to-date on the lots
of things that we have going
on together as we
produce really state of
the art research and pursue
research of common interests.
