Research Projects Make Good Stories

There are more than 800 researchers working at six Microsoft Research labs around the world and lab directors want to recruit the world’s top PhDs.  One of the goals of the Microsoft Research website is to provide content that attracts the talent they hope to hire and also provide the general technology audience with a look at how Microsoft is advancing the state of the art.  Each week the site features a story about a research project and the people who have worked on the project. 

In terms of sheer, brain-churning difficulty, these feature stories have been the most challenging assignments in my career.  The preparation work always makes me wish I had paid more attention to Cmpt 405 back at university.  Was that Algorithm Analysis or maybe it was Computational Linguistics? 

Imagine reading through a research paper (or three) written by computing science PhDs for other PhDs, then interviewing the researchers and hoping your questions do not seem too inane.  Then imagine writing a story for a general audience that properly describes the goals of the research, the technical challenges, and the way it might impact existing or future technologies. 

This work has provided exciting glimpses into the future and given me far more appreciation of the “magic” that we take for granted in all the technology that we use.

Here is a list of some stories I wrote for the Microsoft Research website.