07/17: Microsoft Designates Over $6 to Academic Research and Collaborations
Posted by Patrick
From the press release:
To that end, Microsoft committed nearly $5 million to open requests for proposals (RFPs) — opportunities for academia to receive research funding from Microsoft’s External Research & Programs group, the arm of Microsoft Research that works closely with academic institutions around the globe.
Microsoft will provide funding in the following key areas, which also complement the company’s overall research agenda and goals:
• Cell phones as a platform for healthcare ($1 million). Encourages the development of new prototypes and tools that utilize cell phones to enable better healthcare services in rural and urban communities
• Biomedical computing for genome wide association studies ($700,000). Encourages researchers to develop tools that can facilitate better data usage and analysis for genomewide association studies to provide a stronger framework for enabling personalized treatment methods
• Intelligent Web 3.0 ($500,000). Encourages research to help find, discover, extract, publish, and share information, at a desk or on the go, safely, making the Web meaningful (from string manipulation to meaning computation) and enabling a human-centric, context-aware model of information access
• Mechanisms for safe and scalable multicore computing ($500,000). Encourages research in how operating systems and runtimes can evolve to enable safe and scalable concurrent programs
• Sustainable computing ($500,000). Encourages research in innovative approaches toward power-optimized system architectures, and adaptive power management solutions for maximizing the energy efficiency of computing infrastructure
• Human-robot interaction ($500,000). Encourages research to take human-robot interaction to the next level through development of tools and methods that lead to practical applications with realistic commercial potential within five to 10 years
Microsoft Research also announced the creation of the A. Richard Newton Breakthrough Research Award, which will provide $1 million in funding across several projects to encourage high-quality, breakthrough academic research in computational and multidisciplinary areas. The award honors the memory, legacy and accomplishments of the late A. Richard Newton, former dean of the College of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley and a longtime member of Microsoft Research’s Technical Advisory Board, who died in January 2007.
In addition to funding open RFPs, again this year Microsoft Research will award $1 million to five new and rising faculty members as part of the Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellowship program. This will be the fourth consecutive year Microsoft has made the awards to stimulate and support creative research by promising researchers who have the potential to make a profound impact on the state of the art in their respective research disciplines. ...
As part of Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to using technology to improve education, Microsoft also announced a $750,000 donation over three years to launch the Center for Collaborative Technologies at University of Washington (UW). This is the latest of 11 centers Microsoft has helped to establish to allow university researchers to focus deeply on extending the state of the art in computing. The center will further develop ConferenceXP, a technology that allows researchers, teachers and students to benefit from real-time research collaboration, wireless-enabled classrooms and highly interactive distance-learning environments.
Microsoft will provide funding in the following key areas, which also complement the company’s overall research agenda and goals:
• Cell phones as a platform for healthcare ($1 million). Encourages the development of new prototypes and tools that utilize cell phones to enable better healthcare services in rural and urban communities
• Biomedical computing for genome wide association studies ($700,000). Encourages researchers to develop tools that can facilitate better data usage and analysis for genomewide association studies to provide a stronger framework for enabling personalized treatment methods
• Intelligent Web 3.0 ($500,000). Encourages research to help find, discover, extract, publish, and share information, at a desk or on the go, safely, making the Web meaningful (from string manipulation to meaning computation) and enabling a human-centric, context-aware model of information access
• Mechanisms for safe and scalable multicore computing ($500,000). Encourages research in how operating systems and runtimes can evolve to enable safe and scalable concurrent programs
• Sustainable computing ($500,000). Encourages research in innovative approaches toward power-optimized system architectures, and adaptive power management solutions for maximizing the energy efficiency of computing infrastructure
• Human-robot interaction ($500,000). Encourages research to take human-robot interaction to the next level through development of tools and methods that lead to practical applications with realistic commercial potential within five to 10 years
Microsoft Research also announced the creation of the A. Richard Newton Breakthrough Research Award, which will provide $1 million in funding across several projects to encourage high-quality, breakthrough academic research in computational and multidisciplinary areas. The award honors the memory, legacy and accomplishments of the late A. Richard Newton, former dean of the College of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley and a longtime member of Microsoft Research’s Technical Advisory Board, who died in January 2007.
In addition to funding open RFPs, again this year Microsoft Research will award $1 million to five new and rising faculty members as part of the Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellowship program. This will be the fourth consecutive year Microsoft has made the awards to stimulate and support creative research by promising researchers who have the potential to make a profound impact on the state of the art in their respective research disciplines. ...
As part of Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to using technology to improve education, Microsoft also announced a $750,000 donation over three years to launch the Center for Collaborative Technologies at University of Washington (UW). This is the latest of 11 centers Microsoft has helped to establish to allow university researchers to focus deeply on extending the state of the art in computing. The center will further develop ConferenceXP, a technology that allows researchers, teachers and students to benefit from real-time research collaboration, wireless-enabled classrooms and highly interactive distance-learning environments.
