Pierre-Yves Saintoyant - European University Association

The case for Interdisciplinary Research
or the law of weak interactions
Pierre-Yves Saintoyant
Director of the EMIC
Microsoft 2004
Over $7B R&D
Over 25 000 employees in R&D
Microsoft Research founded in 1991
MSR Staff of over 700 in over 55 areas
Internationally recognized research teams
MS R&D in Europe
Microsoft Research Laboratories (since 1997)
Cambridge, U.K.
Microsoft European Product Development Centre
Dublin, IRE (since 1990)
Microsoft Business Solutions Development Centre
Vedbaek, DK
European Microsoft Innovation Center (May 2003) Aachen
Example: devices vs. my cat today
Which is smarter?
My Device
Mr. Cleo
Unaware of environment Aware of sounds, objects
Oblivious to my presence Knows if I walk in the room
Selfish and inconsiderate Selfish and inconsiderate
Microsoft 1990
Just crossing $1B in sales
Around 5,000 employees
Key products
MS-DOS, Windows 3.0,
Word, Excel, Basic
No research
What is computing research anyway?
Algorithms - How to get computers to do things they can't
do at all or do better what they do poorly
Collectives – How to get large sets of computers to work
harmoniously together
Process – How to make it easier to design and implement
software properly & fast
Why care about
interdisciplinary
research?
The law of weak
interactions!
“Moving among different
domains frees you from the
dogma of any one domain
and their firm belief in links
between problems and
solutions”. Andrew Hargadon
in “How Breakthrough
Happen”
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A key challenge : crossing borders !
Research
projects
Research Development
Example : the EMIC work
Boundary of the company
The market
The 2 challenging borders
All our work is done within collaborative projects
Most projects combine CS with other science disciplines
FP6 IP, Streps, NOE, BMWA
Examples:
Trustcom: economists, lawyers, CS
CoCoon: public health specialists, network operators, etc
Example: AIDS Vaccine Design
Machine learning applied
to AIDS vaccine design
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
University of Washington
Microsoft Research
Progress:
Designed vaccines which are now undergoing
testing at UW
Full test cycle is 10 years
Open innovation
Research
projects
Research Development
Boundary of
the company
Example: the SkyServer project
Digital Astronomy Archive
Sloan Digital Sky Survey
100,000 Hits Per Day
http://skyserver.sdss.org
http:// skyserver.sdss.org
What Is This?
Answer!
What Is Its Extent?
Answer!
Example: the External Research Office
initiative
New
market
Current
market
Source: Henry Chesbrough in “Open
Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating
and Profiting from Technology”
What Are Some More Details?
New computing paradigms
This research programme explores new ways to take computing beyond
its current forms by addressing fundamental problems in computer
science by exploring and applying lessons drawn from nature, chemistry
and biology.
Computational science
The aim of this programme is to create, in collaboration with the scientific
community, a new generation of computational tools for accelerating
advances in science through enhancing the day-to-day productivity of
scientists.
Intelligent environments
Research into new applications for the emerging world of ‘ambient
intelligence’ where sensors, wireless networks and interactive, embedded
computing are invisibly and seamlessly woven into people’s everyday life
and the social environments in which they live.
http://research.microsoft.com/ero/
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Is there a recipe for success?
YES ! …Serendipity
Serendipity : « looking for a needle in
a hay stack and finding the farmer's
daughter »
Roger Needham.
Late GM Microsoft Research.
Cambridge
Vielen Dank für Ihre
Aufmerksamkeit
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