Can Microsoft Save the World?

Microsoft Research teams with top scientists to tackle the world's most pressing problems -- and it could turn conventional computing on its head in the process.

December 2006 • by Doug Barney


Three years ago, William Henry Gates III ordered Microsoft Research to launch a Science division. Money was one motive -- by staking out a position in the growing field of scientific computing, future profits were insured. Fortunately Microsoft Research doesn't have to turn every dollar and man-hour into marketable products. The Science group has the wonderful freedom to work on the big problems: global warming, disease, the future of medicine, the origin of the universe and the creation of life -- those sorts of things.

Leading this charge is Stephen Emmott, director of the Microsoft Research European Science Program, an Englishman with some 20 years of experience in science and computing, including a stint at Bell Labs.

Emmott's main goal is to blend computer science and traditional science, and in the process transform both. "We are at a profoundly important point in time where computer science and computing have the potential to completely revolutionize the sciences," Emmott says.

Microsoft doesn't plan to do this all alone. Today 14 Microsoft researchers are working with some 40 scientists around the world. Those numbers are rapidly expanding. "Within 12 months, there'll be 30 Microsoft Research Cambridge scientists collaborating with around 80 to 100 scientists worldwide to build new software tools for addressing important scientific challenges," Emmott explains.

These efforts were given legs during the 2020 Science conference, where some 30 scientists, hailing from nations from Japan to Germany and representing universities such as Stanford and companies like GlaxoSmithKline Inc., gathered. The group produced an 82-page oversized glossy book, "Towards 2020 Science," outlining their goals, technologies and plans.

The conference also set the stage for research projects, now ongoing, that match Microsoft researchers with their scientific counterparts.

"The real benefits come from bringing together people from Microsoft Research -- whether they're computer scientists or computational biologists or computational climatologists or oceanographers -- with people in the wider science community, to do the kinds of things that neither of us could do on our own," Emmott explains.

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(from http://redmondmag.com)