Microsoft Research India's 5th Anniversary..

With people from virtually all spheres of life, namely, academics, industry, politics and media, The Kamal Mahal in The Maurya Hotel, New Delhi, hardly had any stepping space left, as the symposium on the 5th anniversary of Microsft Research India kicked off at about 10:30 today morning. Starting with a welcome address by Dr. Kentaro Toyama, Assistant Managing Director, MSR India and a progress report by Dr. P Anandan, Managing Director, MSR India, The aggregation was significantly addressed by the Chairman of Microsoft Corporation himself, Mr. Bill Gates.
His existence served the reason for the huge number. He talked about the need for research in today's world and more so, in a country like India, where there were so many problems that could be efficiently solved using technolgy, to name a few, education to all, proper heath care, agricultural awareness and an incessant list of similar ones. With the kind of human capital residing in this part of the world and the maximum demographic divisions amongst all countries, achieving unimaginable goals is no more an a trepidation. Stressing on the need of more research in the field of Computers, he chuckled that if it werent for his Charity Foundation, he would himself have loved to sit in these labs and research.. Being amongst high IQ people, no tight schedule, loving what you do and above all, enjoying it all makes you feel as if you are back to your college days. He went on to name a few of his projects on which research is being carried out presently in the Microsoft Labs, namely , WikiBabble, an effort based on collecting the huge amount of data stored in varied laguages on the net. Using Artificial Intelligence, making the computer learn how to translate from one language to another... just like a human does that, Digital Green, which will help farmers educate about the various crops cultivation in different conditions, to actually be able to capture all the processes done in a video and use it for educational purposes thereafter.

One of the coolest projects he mentioned was about Photosynth, a software which allows you to connect all the different parts of a picture together to produce the orginal one... Saw one of it's applicaiotns in a demo, where using three of such technologies , one could actually create guided tours of different places, with the used beng free to play around with the views the way he wants.. found this one really COOL!!:) Mr. Gates also focused on their criteria of selecting individuals for internships and research by stressing on the ones who were paasionate about their ideas, and were ready to take the incentive... After all, 25 years back no one had ever visualized the stature Microsoft owns now... the way it has transformed from a creator of personal computers to research lab in more than 3 continents around the world. In the end, he had a message for India, highlighting the sheer need of research that can not only solve, virtually all the problems the country is facing right now, but also take it to a global frontier :).
Thereafter Mr. Kapil Sibbal, The Union Human Resource and Development Minister had a message for the assembly centered around being able to see change as a challenge and not as a threat...to absorb everything possible from the global forum, while still retaining aur values as Indians. Followed by a panel discussion on the topic of need of higher Reasearch in this field, and a Question Answer session, the higher dignitaries took leave and we had a fair sight of the demos and projects being handled at the MSR labs at present including Multilingual Systems, Polynomial time primality testing algorithms, matrix manipulations as in DNA, facial recognition and what not.. All in all, It was nice experience.. an enriching one.. one I'll definitely look forward to in the future as well.