Microsoft Research ties-up with IISc

BANGALORE:Microsoft Research today tied-up with Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, to accelerate the scientific discovery process by increasing computational power in scientific and engineering research.

According to this agreement, Microsoft Research would provide funding and research expertise to assist major projects around life sciences research and advanced high-performance computing platforms based on Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 for scientific applications.

“We have always been looking at business computing and consumer computing. This tie-up focuses on technical computing, where combining computer science knowledge with the traditional mathematics will help the scientist to bring in major breakthrough in biological science,” said, Tony Hey, corporate vice-president of External Research, Microsoft at a media briefing here.

Biological Data Mapping, high-performance applications on windows clusters for science, Structural and Functional Genomics, Modelling of the Indian Ocean, are some of the initial projects undertaken by Microsoft and IISc.

“This is first set of scientific and high-performance computing research collaboration in India. By partnering with the leading academia around the world, we hope to solve some of the toughest and most urgent technological challenges facing humanity in areas such as medicine, environmental science and engineering,” said Rick Rashid, senior vice president of Microsoft Research.

Currently Microsoft has over 800 Phd researchers around the world and over 900 Phd interns working with Microsoft last year.

Microsoft has also tied up with leading institutions in China, Korea and Latin America for technical computing research projects.