New Program Steps up Microsoft's Engagement With Academia by Providing
Creative Freedom and Collaboration Opportunities to Today's Most Promising
Young Professors
REDMOND, Wash., May 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Microsoft Research today
announced the first five recipients of its New Faculty Fellowship Awards, a
new program that honors early-career university professors who demonstrate
exceptional talent for novel research and thought leadership in their
discipline.
(Photo: NewsCom: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20000822/MSFTLOGO )
Selected from a pool of 110 nominees representing universities across the
United States, the five inaugural fellows -- three men and two women -- will
each receive a $200,000 cash grant to pursue their innovative research work in
computer science. The winners also are given the opportunity to explore
collaborations with some of the top researchers working in their area of
interest at Microsoft Research.
"We have much to learn, and much to gain, from today's talented young
minds," said Rick Rashid, senior vice president of Microsoft Research. "Even
early in their teaching careers, these award winners are pushing the
boundaries of computer science research in exciting new directions. The
intellectual curiosity, creative drive and thought leadership they demonstrate
is exactly the sort of initiative we seek to encourage in developing programs
like the New Faculty Fellowship Awards."
The five Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellows for 2005 are as follows:
-- Fredo Durand is a third-year assistant professor in the Electrical
Engineering and Computer Science Department of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT), and a member of MIT's Computer Science
and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Durand's research focuses on
two areas: realistic image synthesis, where the originality of his
work derives from the combination of signal processing and perceptual
perspectives; and computational photography, a new field at the
convergence of vision and graphics, born from the opportunities offered
by digital photography.
-- Subhash Khot is a first-year assistant professor in the College of
Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Khot's research
tackles fundamental questions regarding which problems can and cannot
be solved quickly on a computer. The questions Khot addresses in his
work often have deep connections to diverse areas in mathematics,
logic, cryptography and computer science.
-- Dan Klein is a first-year assistant professor in the Electrical
Engineering and Computer Sciences department at the University of
California, Berkeley. Klein's area of interest is natural language
processing, which involves getting computers to analyze and understand
human languages. His research focuses on designing systems that learn
language in an unsupervised way by automatically detecting linguistic
structure.
-- Radhika Nagpal is a first-year assistant professor of computer science
in the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard
University. Her research interest is in engineering self-organizing,
self-repairing systems, using inspiration from biology, and in better
understanding robust collective behavior in biological systems.
-- Wei Wang is an assistant professor in her third year of teaching at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A faculty member in the
Department of Computer Science, Wang pursues research in the area of
data mining, a branch of computer science that focuses on finding
patterns within vast data collections. She specializes in
bioinformatics applications.
New Faculty Fellowship Awards Program
The University Relations group at Microsoft Research established the New
Faculty Fellowship Awards program to identify and support exceptional
first-, second- and third-year professors who are advancing the state of the
art of computer science research. Microsoft Research recognizes that until
young professors can build a reputation, they typically struggle to secure
adequate funding for their research work.
The program accepts just one nominee per university and includes a
rigorous, multiround selection process that culminates in live interviews
before a distinguished panel of reviewers from Microsoft Research and the
academic community.
"This program offers a major boost to a young faculty member with an
exciting research vision," said Maria Klawe, dean of Engineering and Applied
Science at Princeton University, who helped judge the Microsoft Research New
Faculty Fellowship Awards. "It provides support and credibility for long-term
and perhaps risky initiatives. This is extremely important for the field of
computing because computing has been trying to cope with major reductions in
the funding of fundamental research by government and industry."
Microsoft Research plans to award five New Faculty Fellowships annually.
The nomination period for the 2006 New Faculty Fellowship Awards program will
open this summer.
About Microsoft Research University Relations
Microsoft Research University Relations, a division of Microsoft Research,
is dedicated to building world-class relationships with colleges and
universities that enhance the teaching and learning experience, inspire
technological innovation, and establish Microsoft as a leading technology
partner for higher education. More information on Microsoft Research
University Relations can be found at
http://www.research.microsoft.com/collaboration/university .
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in
software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their
full potential.
NOTE: Microsoft is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corp. in the
United States and/or other countries.
The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the
trademarks of their respective owners.
| |
SOURCE Microsoft Corp.
 back to top
Related links:
http://www.microsoft.com
Photo Notes:
NewsCom:
http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20000822/MSFTLOGO
AP Archive: http://photoarchive.ap.org
PRN Photo Desk, photodesk@prnewswire.com
CONTACT:
Amy Andruschat, +1-503-443-7000, or
amya@wagged.com, or Rapid Response Team, +1-503-443-7070, or
rrt@wagged.com, both of Waggener Edstrom, for Microsoft Corp.
NOTE TO EDITORS: If you are interested in viewing additional
information on Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft(R) Web page
at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass on Microsoft's corporate
information pages. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were
correct at time of publication, but may since have changed. For
additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact
Microsoft's Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts
listed at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/contactpr.asp
| |
|
