More than 1,000 scientists and engineers work across multiple research areas in research labs worldwide, making significant product contributions and collaborating on external projects that help solve global challenges.
About Microsoft Research
Collaborative research
Microsoft Research collaborates with the world’s foremost researchers in academia, industry and government to move research in new directions across nearly every field of computer science, engineering and general science. Through global and regional initiatives, Microsoft aims to accelerate research and discovery and ultimately to help researchers and scientists address some of the toughest, most urgent societal and technological challenges.
Research areas
Discover publications, projects, downloads and more for the research areas below.
Algorithms and Theory
Exploring the theoretical foundations of computing, and efficient algorithms for a wide variety of problems.
Communication and Collaboration
Enabling people to reach each other instantly any time on any device.
Computational Linguistics
Focusing on machine translation, multilingual systems and natural-language processing.
Providing computational support to unravel the mysteries of the universe.
Computer Systems and Networking
Developing technologies that enable computers to operate efficiently and securely in a highly distributed computing environment
Computer Vision
Teaching computers to see and understand the visual world.
Data Mining and Management
Creating systems for accessing and managing large collections of data, and algorithms for finding patterns and insights within the data.
Economics and Computation
Exploring the connections between economics and computer science, and creating economic models of online systems.
Education
Building partnerships with academia to advance computer science and education.
Gaming
Exploring new technologies to enhance the gaming experience, and identifying and developing innovative technologies and curricula to aid in educational activities.
Graphics and Multimedia
Exploring solutions to complex challenges in producing, transmitting, and displaying increasingly sophisticated multimedia.
Hardware and Devices
Building the hardware that will support the next generation of software.
Health and Well-Being
Leading innovation in assisted cognition, bioinformatics, synthetic biology, and biomedicine.
Human-Computer Interaction
Advancing the way people interact with computers and devices.
Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence
Building software that automatically learns from data to create more advanced, intelligent computer systems.
Mobile Computing
Exploring how to build mobile devices and services that are efficient, responsive, and usable.
Quantum Computing
Exploiting quantum physics to create a new generation of computing devices.
Search, Information Retrieval and Knowledge Management
Exploring indexing and classification technologies, entity extraction, and user-experience concepts that help people organize and find information.
Security and Privacy
Ensuring the privacy and integrity of our computations and data.
Social Media
Exploring how virtual communities and networks are changing the way people work, play, and connect with each other.
Social Science
Exploring how people use computing in their daily lives.
Software Development, Programming Principles, Tools, and Languages
Improving quality and efficiency throughout the software-development process.
Speech Recognition, Synthesis, and Dialog Systems
Teaching computers to speak and listen.
Technology for Emerging Markets
Understanding how technologies can address the needs and aspirations of people in the world’s developing communities.
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Blogs
- Inside Microsoft Research
- Don Syme’s WebLog on F# and Related Topics
- Dan on eScience & Technical Computing @ Microsoft Blog
- HD View
- James D. McCaffrey
- Microsoft Research Connections Blog
- Microsoft Translator (and Bing Translator) Official Team Blog
- Nikolai Tillmann’s Blog
- Peli’s Farm — Pex, Stubs, Moles, QuickGraph, MbUnit, Reflector Addins
- Reed’s Ruminations: A Blog by Dan Reed
- The RIN Blog
- Social Media Collective Research Blog