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China has more PhDs in Computer Science than India

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CIOL Bureau
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Rick Rashid whom BusinessWeek recently referred to as “Microsoft's right brain”, heads Microsoft Research (MSR)- a division of the software giant- that works on basic research in computer science. He manages research labs spread across global locations in Silicon Valley, San Francisco and Redmond in the US; Beijing, China; Bangalore, India and Cambridge, London. He was in Bangalore recently to attend the Microsoft TechVista symposium, where he unveiled “Virtual India”, a multilingual digital map prototype that was developed at MSR India. He spoke to Priya Padmanabhan of CyberMedia News about Microsoft Research, hot technologies and the importance of basic research.

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What is the idea behind Microsoft TechVista?

Microsoft TechVista is an annual symposium organized by Microsoft Research every year. We are trying to increase our profile and interact with students in academic institutions and faculty. We organize such conferences every year in various cities across the world like Redmond, and also in China. It is a good way of reaching out to universities, professors and students.

It is an opportunity to bring in well-known speakers and this makes it inspiring for researchers. The purpose is also to encourage students to take up basic research. It is shocking to know that India only produces less than 50 PhDs in Computer Science every year. Compared to China, which produces around 15,000 every year, this is alarming.

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What kind of importance does Microsoft place on basic research?

Bill Gates is one of the strongest proponents of basic research in the technology world. Basic research provides the agility to address change rapidly and helps us compete better. The Microsoft of today is totally unrecognizable to how it was 10 years ago. It is necessary to continuously adapt to changes and venture into new areas, new markets and respond fast to market requirements.

The tablet PC was developed at our research lab in Cambridge. The digital media PC was also a contribution of MSR. Windows Mobile and CE also came out of our Research labs.

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We care about the technologies we create. We just hire the best in the field and hold them accountable for being successful and they take the risks. There is no restriction on what they have to do. We have the centers at various locations since we believe that it is important to have a diversity of perspectives. We believe that culture and environment shapes what people do.

What would be the special focus area in MSR India?

Language is a unique issue in India and we are working in this area. Differences in communication create unique opportunities to explore areas like automated translation, multilingual systems, and multi-language support.

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It is good to have a diversity of exposures, problems and perspectives. Exposing researchers to new issues gets them thinking.

We are also doing research in emerging markets and looking at ways of increasing the technology reach to rural areas and schools. We have ethnographers and sociologists working in the labs to understand the social context of technology and learn the opportunities that are available. Having a center here gives that unique perspective.

What technologies are you excited about?

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We have made enormous progress in software analysis, and in developing new tools for software development, which allows our developers to prove millions of lines of code in a fast and efficient way. We have helped in building reliable, predictable systems. Another area is computer graphics and computer vision. New applications in future would enable even novices to do photo editing without much effort. I am also excited about the implications of the enormous amount of storage that is getting built in these times. Soon we it will be possible to store every conversation we have had in life. We are trying to augment human memory-something that never been done before.

What kind of future do you envisage for mobility and convergence?

We are putting intelligence into all kinds of everyday devices like even watches and clocks. (He shows his Tissot High T watch that wirelessly provides information such as weather, stock prices and the latest news on the dial).

We will see more and more devices becoming part of the computing environment. The challenge lies in integrating all of them together. For instance, there is a company that is working on building an alarm clock that gives you weather and traffic updates and appointments for the day. Soon, it will be possible to tie in all the aspects to create a computing environment that is attuned to an individual's needs.

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