Microsoft PhD Summit 2019

Speaker: Donald Kossmann (opens in new tab), Microsoft Research

Title: The Global AI Supercomputer | video (opens in new tab)

Professor Donald Kossmann, Distinguished Scientist and Director or the Redmond Lab gave the Microsoft PhD Summit opening keynote on the topic of The Global AI Supercomputer and the next era of computing.

Speaker: Bailu Ding (opens in new tab), Microsoft Research

Title: Automatically Indexing Databases | video (opens in new tab)

Selecting an appropriate set of indexes to build in a database for a given workload can result in significant reductions in query execution cost, e.g., CPU time. Being able to fully automate index recommendation and implementation is a significant value-add for a cloud database service provider. One key requirement of automated index implementation for production systems is that creating or dropping indexes does not cause significant query performance regressions. Such regressions, where a query’s execution cost increases after changing the indexes, is a major impediment to fully-automated indexing as users desire to enforce a no query regression constraint.

In this talk, I give an overview of the architecture of auto-indexing. I then cover two research directions in this area from my previous work: Plan Forcing for regression recovery and AI Meets AI for regression prevention.

Speaker: Dan Morris (opens in new tab), Microsoft AI for Earth

Title: Making Wildlife Surveys More Efficient and Less Excruciatingly Boring with Computer Vision

Speaker: Nathalie Riche (opens in new tab), Microsoft Research

Title: Digital ink + Data | video (opens in new tab)

Speaker: Scott Saponas (opens in new tab), Microsoft Healthcare

Title: Physiological Sensing Outside the Clinic | video (opens in new tab)

Moderator: Meredith Ringel Morris (opens in new tab), Microsoft Research

Panelist: Landon Cox (opens in new tab), Microsoft Research; Charles L. Isbell, Jr. (opens in new tab), Georgia Institute of Technology; James Mickens (opens in new tab), Harvard University

This panel’s members have all held a variety of jobs post-Ph.D., including a mixture of academic and industrial roles. The panelists will compare and contrast these career paths, and discuss how students can prepare themselves for different types of post-graduate careers.

Moderator: Meredith Ringel Morris (opens in new tab), Microsoft Research

Panelists: Denae Ford Robinson (opens in new tab), Microsoft Research; Dioselin Gonzalez (opens in new tab), Microsoft Research; Shadi Noghabi (opens in new tab), Microsoft Research

This panel features speakers who have held a variety of roles at Microsoft Research, including postdoc, researcher, and research software engineering roles. The panelists will describe these roles, and give tips on how to successfully prepare for, apply for, and interview for jobs at Microsoft Research.

Speaker: Tom Ball (opens in new tab), Microsoft Research

Programming Webs of Microcontrollers. I’ll discuss progress in using web technology to make it easier to program microcontroller-based devices, with a focus on physical computing for CS education. For more info, see www.makecode.com (opens in new tab).

Speaker: Ken Hinckley (opens in new tab), Microsoft Research

Title: Practical Sensing of the “Seen but Unnoticed” | video (opens in new tab)

Ken Hinckley talks about practical approaches to sensing the “seen but unnoticed” vocabulary of natural touch and device interaction. Examples include automatic screen rotation on mobiles, posture sensing on dual-screen devices, or even pre-touch sensing that perhaps could vault future devices well beyond the flatland of traditional touchscreen interfaces.

Speaker: Nikunj Raghuvanshi (opens in new tab), Microsoft Research

Title: Project Triton: interactive sound propagation | video (opens in new tab)

Project Triton aims to bring the acoustic realism in games and VR on-par with photo-realistic lighting. It accurately models wave effects like diffracted occlusion, scattering, and reverberation of sound in real-time and has shipped in several major games.

Speaker: Martin Roetteler (opens in new tab), Microsoft Quantum

Title: Programming in Q# and the Microsoft Quantum Development Kit | video (opens in new tab)

In this talk, I give an overview of the Microsoft Quantum Development Kit. Using real-world applications in chemistry and cryptography, I show how Q# software libraries and quantum dev tools can be used to analyze the resource footprints of large scale quantum algorithms.

Speaker: Asta Roseway (opens in new tab), Microsoft Research

Title: Urban Innovation Initiative | video (opens in new tab)

Asta Roseway gives a brief overview of the career path that led her to Microsoft Research and the projects she’s currently working on including DigiGirlz, Urban Innovation Initiative, and Artist in Residence.

Speaker: Mike Sinclair (opens in new tab), Microsoft Research

Title: Natural User Interface – Haptics | video (opens in new tab)

My research goal is to develop a producible haptic technology for use in AR/VR that presents a natural tactile interface to the user rather than vibrotactile as is done today.

Speaker: Siddharth Suri (opens in new tab), Microsoft Research AI

Title: The Collaboration & Communication Networks Within the Crowd | video (opens in new tab)

Siddharth Suri discusses the research finding for his book, Ghost Work, done in collaboration with Mary L. Gray.

Speaker: Irene Zhang (opens in new tab), Microsoft Research

Title: Next Generation Operating Systems for the Datacenter | video (opens in new tab)

Irene’s research focuses on next-generation operating systems for the datacenter. As datacenter I/O speed increase, kernel-bypass and programmable I/O devices will become crucial for datacenter performance. The Demikernel is a new OS architecture that makes it easier for applications to leverage these complex devices and achieve better performance with minimal modifications.