Podcasts about microsoft research cambridge

Timestamps:5:30 - When is it time to scale your dev team?10:03 - Nearshore, offshore, or in-house?12:37 - Can we trust AI to write code?14h33 - Top criteria to hire developers27:38 - Costly mistakes setting up a dev teamClick here to subscribe to our newsletter.About Simon Youssef & Nenad Nikolic:Simon Youssef is the co-founder and CTO of the online bank neon. He holds a PhD in Computational Biophysics from Microsoft Research Cambridge and worked at Strategy& before co-founding neon in 2017.Nenad Nikolic is the co-founder, Co-CEO and CTO of Holycode, and also the co-founder of MOVU and the former CIO of Bexio. He holds a MSc in Computer Science from the Faculty of Computer Science (Belgrade, Serbia) and worked for DeinDeal before joining Laurent Decrue on their 10+ year entrepreneurial journey in 2014.During their chat with Silvan, Simon and Nenad discussed best practices for scaling your dev team. Naturally, the first question that poses itself when it comes to this topic is: When is it time to scale your dev team? It depends, obviously — but, generally speaking, the tech team needs to follow the growth of the company itself. At an early stage, you may be able to cut corners when it comes to security and backup strategy to move fast, but at some point you will need to start dedicating 25-30% of development time to these tasks.Don't scale too early: big teams are costly and may run you to the ground. You should only have the tech stack that you absolutely need. Besides, if you scale too fast, your culture is going to go down the drain, and then you'll be left with a whole lot of infighting and inefficiency.Don't scale too late: waiting around for too long can result in a build-up of pressure on your developers that may very well burn them out.Should you hire in-house developers? Or nearshore them? Offshore them, perhaps? neon did it all, and Simon can confidently say that nearshoring works best:If you have your dev team in-house in Switzerland, you are going to pay a lot. 2-3 engineers in a nearshoring location are equivalent to 1 engineer in Switzerland. Besides, you'll be vulnerable to the “Hey, Joe!” principle: having the dev team, product managers and the management all in the same building means these latter two will be able to bother your dev team with random tasks which slow the dev team down overall.You also don't want to offshore it, because then you cannot visit as often. It's best to nearshore your dev team to somewhere within your timezone which has great flight connections to your main location. What's the top criteria to hire developers?Pay attention to your gut feeling when it comes to the culture fit. Don't hire someone you wouldn't want to spend 2h straight with. And don't hire someone who is too proud or inflexible to be proven wrong. They may be fast when developing all on their own, but they will never be effective in a fast team.When hiring senior engineers, look for strong domain knowledge and experience. When hiring junior engineers, hire for brains, not experience. The cover portrait was edited by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.smartportrait.io⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠‍

Questions, suggestions, or feedback? Send us a message!In this episode we talk to Ali Eslami, who is a Principal Research Scientist at Google DeepMind studying artificial intelligence. He's currently also Director of Research Strategy for Google Gemini. Prior to this, he led a team at DeepMind working on generative models, self-supervised learning, multi-modal large language models. He also led the Quantum Chemistry and Materials team in Science.Prior to DeepMind, he was a post-doctoral researcher at Microsoft Research Cambridge. He did his PhD at the University of Edinburgh, where he was a Carnegie scholar. During that time he was also a visiting researcher at Oxford University in the visual geometry group.We talk about:The emergence of the AI landscapeWhether you need a body to understand the worldHuman perception slash PlatoThe difference between how humans and AI learnHow AI models are built and trainedDifferences between Machine learning and Generative AIMarcus Aurelius and how amazing the human brain isWhether we are about to surrender our sovereignty to AILet's log in!Web: www.whereshallwemeet.xyzTwitter: @whrshallwemeetInstagram: @whrshallwemeet

Giovanni Cherubin and Ahmed Salem join Nic Fillingham and Wendy Zenone on this week's episode of The BlueHat Podcast. Giovanni is a Senior Researcher in Machine Learning and Security at Microsoft Research Cambridge, and Ahmed is a researcher in Confidential Computing at the Microsoft Research lab in Cambridge, UK. They're both interested in artificial intelligence and are researching the privacy, security, fairness, and accountability risks of the different machine learning settings. In this episode, they discuss how to identify and address privacy threats in machine learning models, the connection between privacy and information leakage, and how privacy is perceived in academia and industry.In This Episode You Will Learn: Algorithmic procedures for describing threats and attacksThe rapid growth of machine learning research in attacks and defenseThe framework for fostering collaboration and understanding within the fieldSome Questions We Ask: What are the main threats you are currently focused on? Who will benefit from this research besides academics and researchers?Can you explain the concept of privacy as it relates to information leakage?Resources: View Giovanni Cherubin on LinkedInView Ahmed Salem on LinkedInView Wendy Zenone on LinkedInView Nic Fillingham on LinkedInDiscover and follow other Microsoft podcasts at microsoft.com/podcasts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's guest is Simon Peyton Jones – a hugely influential computer scientist who has spent his career researching the implementation and applications of functional programming languages, particularly lazy functional programming. After a stint in academia, he joined Microsoft Research Cambridge (1998-2022) where he spent more than 20 years before becoming an Engineering Fellow at Epic Games last year.Simon's main research interest is in functional programming languages, their implementation, and their application. He was a key contributor to the design of the now-standard functional language Haskell, and was the lead designer of the widely-used Glasgow Haskell Compiler.He is also the Chair of Computing at School, the grass-roots organisation which helped lead to the reform in our English computing curriculum in 2014, now making the subject compulsory in all schools.In this conversation, we discuss how he fell in love with programming, how he approaches complex problems, what Epic's Tim Sweeny's vision is for the metaverse and why he believes all kids should code.Simon's enthusiasm for the field of computer science is hugely infectious and whether you know of him already or not, I think you will really enjoy this episode. Simon Peyton Jones Website / Twitter / GitHub / Computing at SchoolDanielle Twitter / Instagram / Newsletter 

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang | The importance of Rest & 4 Day Week My guest today is Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, he is a program director at 4 Day Week Global, a nonprofit advocating for the 4-day workweek. His trilogy of books— SHORTER: Work Better, Smarter and Less— Here's How (Public Affairs, 2020); REST: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less (Basic Books, 2016), and THE DISTRACTION ADDICTION (Little Brown, 2013)— shows how companies and individuals can better integrate rest, creativity, and focus into digital-age lives and work. Alex has been a consultant at Institute for the Future and Strategic Business Insights, and a visiting scholar at Microsoft Research Cambridge, Oxford University, Stanford University, and UC Berkeley. Alex received a Ph.D. in history and sociology of science from the University of Pennsylvania. I read Alex's book Rest a while ago, and then I came back to it during Covid. In a high-pressure, ever changing environment, I grew to appreciate yet again the importance of Rest. I see it as a life changing advantage in a life of an investor, or any professional. Alex's book gave me tools, and guidance how to include rest in my life, and how to do it well. It also gave me a permission to see rest as an important part of my daily life. Today, you'll hear about: 1) The concept of Obliquity as in reaching your goals in an indirect way. 2) Learning to rest better 3) Seeing rest not as absence of work or opposite to work, but as an equal 4) The importance of rest in life of an investor, and what benefits it can offer 5) The impact of remote work on our rest and productivity. Please help me welcome, Alex Soojung-Kim Pang RECENT PUBLICATIONS LINKS Strategy+Rest: www.strategy.rest LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/askpang Twitter and Instagram: @askpang ---- To get regular updates and bonus content, please sign-up for my substack: ⁠https://bogumilbaranowski.substack.com/⁠ Learn more about Talking Billions Learn more about Bogumil Baranowski Learn more about Sicart Associates, LLC. Read Money, Life, Family: My Handbook: My complete collection of principles on investing, finding work & life balance, and preserving family wealth. NEVER INVESTMENT ADVICE. IMPORTANT: As a reminder, the remarks in this interview represent the views, opinions, and experiences of the participants and are based upon information they believe to be reliable; however, Sicart Associates nor I have independently verified all such remarks. The content of this podcast is for general, informational purposes, and so are the opinions of members of Sicart Associates, a registered investment adviser, and guests of the show. This podcast does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any specific security or financial instruments or provide investment advice or service. Past performance is not indicative of future results. More information on Sicart Associates is available via its Form ADV disclosure documents available adviserinfo.sec.gov. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/talking-billions/message

On today's episode, we sit down with educator, researcher, and all-around information guru Simon Peyton Jones to learn all about programming languages and their impact on hardware, software, and research/development. Simon also brings some professional insight into Excel as a programing language. Oddly enough, around the time Rob met Simon, Rob began to think of Excel as a programming language. In order to be a language, the formulas have to deal with both space and time, so Excel formula language absolutely fits the bill. Just be careful how you code. On older systems, if you perform a VLOOKUP at the same time as a nested IF, it might disrupt the space-time continuum and bring about the blue screen of death! As an engineering fellow at Epic Games, a researcher for Microsoft Research Cambridge, and a professor at Glasgow University, Simon also brings a unique perspective on changing the educational system to include base learning on computer science as part of general education. Not only did Simon step up and suggest change, but he also followed through and created a coalition to guide the program and ensure future expansion as needed. When Simon talks about research, people listen! As always, if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform to help others find the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive Podcast Also in this episode: Simon Peyton Jones's bookmarks! Alonzo Church – Lambda Calculus Touring machine Automata Theory LAMBDA: The Ultimate Excel worksheet function. (Andy Gordon, Simon Peyton Jones) LISP functional language Microsoft Research – Cambridge Arthur Norman – functional programming John Backus Turing Award Setting up for Success w/David McKinnis Declarative Programing Immutability Changes Everything Computing at School – CAS Scratch - Computer Programming Logo - Apple Estimating the value of Pi using Monte Carlo Code.org Tesla One-Way Valve Turing Tumble Robo Rally Board Game Unreal Engine Joe Duffy on Transactional Memory Haskell Language

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang is head of global programs for 4 Day Week Global, a nonprofit evangelizing the 4-day workweek. His trilogy of books— SHORTER: Work Better, Smarter and Less— Here's How (Public Affairs, 2020); REST: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less (Basic Books, 2016), and THE DISTRACTION ADDICTION (Little Brown , 2013)— shows how companies and individuals can better integrate rest, creativity, and focus into digital-age lives and work. Alex has been a senior consultant at Institute for the Future and Strategic Business Insights, and a visiting scholar at Microsoft Research Cambridge, Oxford University, Stanford University, and UC Berkeley. Alex received a Ph.D. in history and sociology of science from the University of Pennsylvania. Alex shared with me updates regarding the implementation of the 4 day week across the world. He talked with me about insights from his recent The Four-Day Week 2022 Annual Report. Alex provided benefits of the 4 day week with regards to the great resignation and gave his view on where he sees the future of work evolving over the next years.  This podcast episode is based on our recent LinkedIn Live conversation.  In our previous conversation in episode 19 in the fall of 2020, Alex shared great insights from his book "Shorter" with me. Here is the link to that episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/alex-soojung-kim-pang-author-of-shorter-rest/id1505170119?i=1000499304366   How to connect with Alex: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/askpang/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/askpang Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/askpang/   If you would like to support the podcast: Ko-fi Account: Ko-fi.com/karintischler   How to connect with Karin Tischler, producer and podcast host of "Job Sharing and Beyond", and founder of Emily's Path Consulting (EPC): Website: https://emilyspath.ca/  LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/karin-tischler/ Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/jobsharingandbeyond/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/JobsharingByond Twitter: https://twitter.com/karin_tischler Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/karintischlerbc/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/emilyspathca/?viewAsMember=true

Unlocking the challenge of molecular simulation has the potential to yield significant breakthroughs in how we tackle such societal issues as climate change, drug discovery, and the treatment of disease, and Microsoft is ramping up its efforts in the space. In this episode, Chris Bishop, Lab Director of Microsoft Research Cambridge, welcomes renowned machine learning researcher Max Welling to the Microsoft Research team as head of the new Amsterdam lab. Connecting over their shared physics background and vision for molecular simulation, Bishop and Welling explore several fascinating topics, including a future in which machine learning and quantum computing will be used in tandem to model molecules, the power of machine learning to provide “on demand” data in this space, and goals for the first year and beyond at the Amsterdam lab. https://www.microsoft.com/research

For Microsoft researchers, COVID-19 was a call to action. The reimagining of work practices had long been an area of study, but existing and new questions that needed immediate answers surfaced as companies and their employees quickly adjusted to significantly different working conditions. Teams from across the Microsoft organizational chart pooled their unique expertise together under The New Future of Work initiative. The results have informed product features designed to better support remote work and are now being used to help companies, including Microsoft, usher their workforces into a future of hybrid work. In this episode of The New Future of Work series of the podcast, Chief Scientist Jaime Teevan and Abigail Sellen, Deputy Lab Director at Microsoft Research Cambridge in the United Kingdom, explore the dynamics of meetings and collaborations in the context of remote work. They specifically address the difference between weak and strong ties in our professional networks and why both matter to employee and company success. They also break down the phenomenon of video fatigue and share ways in which remote meetings may actually have the advantage. https://www.microsoft.com/research

On this weeks Sunday Session I chat to Aditya Nori, lead of the Health Intelligence theme at Microsoft Research Cambridge, where their mission is to transform the practice of medicine via trusted and human-centred AI. In the past, Aditya has developed AI-based productivity tools for cancer treatment (The InnerEye Project), and also explored various synergies between programming languages and machine learning which inspired new perspectives in formal verification, probabilistic programming, and reliable machine learning. He has also built several programmer productivity tools, including the 2nd generation of the Static Driver Verifier toolkit for Microsoft Windows. Get in touch with Aditya: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/adityan/ Subscribe to Healthtech Pigeon

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang studies people, technologies, and the worlds they make. His latest book SHORTER explains how companies all over the world, in a variety of industries, are shortening their working hours while improving productivity and profitability.  SHORTER is the third in a series of books that makes the case for recognizing the value of rest in creative and prolific lives, and blends science and history to better understand how we can live and work better in the digital age. HIs previous books, REST: WHY YOU GET MORE DONE WHEN YOU WORK LESS, and THE DISTRACTION ADDICTION, have been translated in 14 languages.  Through his company Strategy + Rest, Alex speaks and works around the world with companies who want to apply these insights in their organizations.  Alex received a Ph.D. in history and sociology of science from the University of Pennsylvania, and has been a lecturer or visiting scholar at Stanford University, UC Berkeley, Oxford University and Microsoft Research Cambridge.  How to contact Alex: Strategy + Rest: www.strategy.rest LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/askpang Twitter and Instagram: @askpang   What we talked about: 4:32 Story of Rest and Shorter books 10:11 Examples of companies with shortened hours from the book 15:15 Set up of the book - Design thinking 21:42 Care work - critical for the economy 24:54 New hiring patterns - helpful for parents 30:47 Job sharing 34:25 Male company leaders & flexible work 37:06 How did companies become more efficient? 43:20 Non-knowledge worker companies 46:50 Jinya Inn - Japan   How to connect with Karin Tischler, host of Job Sharing and Beyond and founder of Emily's Path Consulting (EPC): Website: https://emilyspath.ca/  Subscribe to the monthly EPC newsletter here! Extra Q&A interview, interesting research findings, updates on previous "Job Sharing and Beyond" podcast guests and exclusive previews about future guests!  LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/karin-tischler/ Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/jobsharingandbeyond/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/JobsharingByond Twitter: https://twitter.com/karin_tischler Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/karintischlerbc/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/emilyspathca/?viewAsMember=true Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EmilysPathConsulting

Many of us check our email within 30 seconds of waking. Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, author of three books, Shorter, Rest, and The Distraction Addiction, shares in this episode why we might consider refocusing our relationship with technology (“managing our attention”), why mind wandering, deep play, and rest are so critical for creativity and problem solving, and why many companies are successfully adopting a four-day workweek or a shorter workday.Resources:"How better routines create happier workers," (Financial Times, Sept 2020)"How do you switch to a four-day week?” Kingsley (The Economist Applied) (Oct 2020)“Surprising COVID-19 Side Effect: More Companies Adopt the 4-day Workweek,” Fast Company, Aug 2020. “To Safely Reopen, Make the Workweek Shorter. Then Keep It Shorter,” The Atlantic, Apr 2020.“It’s Time to End 9-5 Office Hours,” The Guardian, Mar 2020.“Shorter Hours Make Stronger Businesses,” Wall Street Journal, Feb 2020.“Why Companies Should Say Goodbye to the 996 Work Culture, and Hello to 4-day Weeks,” South China Morning Post, Apr 2019.Talks at Google- Alex's interview at Google (2019)Strategy and Rest- Alex’s consultancy LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/askpangTwitter and Instagram: @askpangAlex’s book recommendations:The Innovation Delusion (Vinsel + Russell)Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Csikszentmihalyi)The First Emancipator: Slavery, Religion, and the Quiet Revolution of Robert Carter (Levy)Bio:Alex Soojung-Kim Pang studies people, technologies, and the worlds they make. His latest book SHORTER explains how companies all over the world, in a variety of industries, are shortening their working hours while improving productivity and profitability.Through his company Strategy + Rest, Alex speaks and works around the world with companies who want to apply these insights in their organizations.Alex received a Ph.D. in history and sociology of science from the University of Pennsylvania, and has been a lecturer or visiting scholar at Stanford University, UC Berkeley, Oxford University, and Microsoft Research Cambridge. Alex lives in Silicon Valley.northstarsleepschool.com/podcast

Sebastian Nowozin is currently a Researcher at Microsoft Research Cambridge. His research focuses on probabilistic deep learning, consequences of model misspecification, understanding agent complexity in order to improve learning efficiency, and designing models for reasoning and planning. His PhD thesis is titled "Learning with Structured Data: Applications to Computer Vision", which he completed in 2009. We discuss the work in his thesis on structured inputs and structured outputs, which involves beautiful ideas from polyhedral combinatorics and optimization. We talk about his recent work on Bayesian deep learning and the connections it has to ideas that he explored during his PhD. Episode notes: https://cs.nyu.edu/~welleck/episode4.html Follow the Thesis Review (@thesisreview) and Sean Welleck (@wellecks) on Twitter, and find out more info about the show at https://cs.nyu.edu/~welleck/podcast.html

This episode originally aired in June, 2019 You may not know who Dr. Andrew Fitzgibbon is, but if you’ve watched a TV show or movie in the last two decades, you’ve probably seen some of his work. An expert in 3D computer vision and graphics, and head of the new All Data AI group at Microsoft Research Cambridge, Dr. Fitzgibbon was instrumental in the development of Boujou, an Emmy Award-winning 3D camera tracker that lets filmmakers place virtual props, like the floating candles in Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, into live-action footage. But that was just his warm-up act. On today’s podcast, Dr. Fitzgibbon tells us what he’s been working on since the Emmys in 2002, including body- and hand-tracking for powerhouse Microsoft technologies like Kinect for Xbox 360 and HoloLens, explains how research on dolphins helped build mathematical models for the human hand, and reminds us, once again, that the “secret sauce” to most innovation is often just good, old-fashioned hard work. https://www.microsoft.com/research  

Remember when a hard drive that could hold a terabyte of data was a big deal? Well, we’re now in an era where peta-, exa- and even zetta-bytes are the bytes of the day, and it turns out it’s hard to fit that many zeroes on a hard drive. That’s where Dr. Ant Rowstron, Deputy Lab Director of Microsoft Research Cambridge, and Mark Russinovich, Chief Technical Officer of Azure, come in. Their respective teams are working on paradigm-breaking solutions to give us phenomenal storage power in an itty-bitty living space. Today, Ant and Mark discuss their roles in the development of new optical technologies, like Project Silica, for cloud-scale storage demands, and talk about the Optics for the Cloud Research Alliance, an exciting new collaboration between academic researchers and MSR. They also explain how just the right mix of innovation and engineering can make the cloud more powerful and less expensive to use and, at the same time, deliver “forever” storage that’s both dishwasher and microwave safe! https://www.microsoft.com/research

In this weeks podcast my guest is one of my favourite authors Alex Soojung-Kim Pang. We discuss why it's so necessary to rest so that you are more productive and get more done in your life. If you want to find out more about me head on over to www.ncrealestate.co.uk If you want to join my Property Investment Facebook Community then head over to: https://www.facebook.com/groups/propertyinvestmentmastery/ You can follow me on Instagram/Twitter: @natashaccollins Alex Soojung-Kim Pang studies people, technologies, and the worlds they make. His latest book, SHORTER: HOW COMPANIES ARE REDESIGNING THE WORKDAY AND REINVENTING THE FUTURE explores the global movement to shorten working hours, and how companies in a variety of industries are moving to 4-day weeks or 6-hour days without sacrificing productivity or profitability. It's the third in a series of books that makes the case for recognizing the value of rest in creative and prolific lives, and blend science and history to better understand how we can live and work better in the digital age. His previous books, REST: WHY YOU GET MORE DONE WHEN YOU WORK LESS, and THE DISTRACTION ADDICTION, have been translated into 14 languages. Through his latest venture, The Restful Company, he speaks and consults around the world with companies who want to put this work into practice in their organizations. Alex received a Ph.D. in history and sociology of science, and has been a lecturer or fellow at Stanford University, UC Berkeley, Oxford University, and Microsoft Research Cambridge. A native Californian, he lives in Silicon Valley. LINKS The Restful Company: www.restful.company Blog: www.deliberate.rest LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/askpang Twitter: @askpang

You may not know who Dr. Andrew Fitzgibbon is, but if you’ve watched a TV show or movie in the last two decades, you’ve probably seen some of his work. An expert in 3D computer vision and graphics, and head of the new All Data AI group at Microsoft Research Cambridge, Dr. Fitzgibbon was instrumental in the development of Boujou, an Emmy Award-winning 3D camera tracker that lets filmmakers place virtual props, like the floating candles in Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, into live-action footage. But that was just his warm-up act. On today’s podcast, Dr. Fitzgibbon tells us what he’s been working on since the Emmys in 2002, including body- and hand-tracking for powerhouse Microsoft technologies like Kinect for Xbox 360 and HoloLens, explains how research on dolphins helped build mathematical models for the human hand, and reminds us, once again, that the “secret sauce” to most innovation is often just good, old-fashioned hard work.

You never know how an incident in your own life might inspire a breakthrough in science, but Dr. Cecily Morrison, a researcher in the Human Computer Interaction group at Microsoft Research Cambridge, can attest to how even unexpected events can cause us to see things through a different – more inclusive – lens and, ultimately, give rise to innovations in research that impact everyone. On today’s podcast, Dr. Morrison gives us an overview of what she calls the “pillars” of inclusive design, shares how her research is positively impacting people with health issues and disabilities, and tells us how having a child born with blindness put her in touch with a community of people she would otherwise never have met, and on the path to developing Project Torino, an inclusive physical programming language for children with visual impairments.

The second of three special episodes recorded in partnership with Microsoft from their Future Decoded event in ExCeL, London. Focusing on Technology for Good, this show features Haiyan Zhang, Innovation Director at Microsoft Research Cambridge; Former Manchester United & England Footballer and now Founder of UA92, Gary Neville; Craig Parker, Microsoft's Education Partner Lead; Aaron Powell, Chief Digital Director at NHS Blood and Transplant; Hector Minto, Microsoft's Accessibility Evangelist for EMEA and Andrew Cook, Microsoft's Senior Product Marketing Manager for Firstline

The final episode of this special series that we recorded in partnership with Microsoft from their Future Decoded event in ExCeL, London. Looking at Technology and Innovation Trends, our guests include Scott Allen, Microsoft UK CMO; Edd Atcheson, Adobe EMEA's Lead Digital Strategist; Michael Wignall, Microsoft CTO; Chris Bishop, Laboratory Director at Microsoft Research Cambridge; Peter Deane, Vice President, VISR; Angela Evans, Microsoft's Office Business Group Lead UK and Praveen Maloo, Product Evangelist for Microsoft Teams.

To celebrate the International Day of women and girls in science , in this week’s podcast we have Dr Sara-Jane Dunn. Sara is a scientist based within the Biological Computation group at Microsoft Research Cambridge, and an affiliate researcher at the Wellcome Trust – Medical Research Council Stem Cell Institute, University of Cambridge. She trained as a mathematician and got a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Oxford. Currently Sara-Jane works at the interface between mathematics, computer science and biology, specifically developing a theory of biology as computation, in which the biochemistry of the cell performs information processing in the service of decision-making. To fulfil her goal she collaborates with research experimentalists at the Universities of Cambridge and Padova to investigate stem cell decision-making throughout Development. The goal of her research is ultimately to make cells programmable, which could fundamentally transform medicine, agriculture and even the ways we generate energy.

In episode sixteen we chat with Danny Tarlow of Microsoft Research Cambridge (in the UK not MA). Danny (along with Chris Maddison and Tom Minka) won best paper at NIPS 2014 for his paper A* Sampling. We talk with him about his work in applying machine learning to sports and politics. Plus we take a listener question on making real time predictions using machine learning, and we demystify backpropagation. You can use Torch, Theano or Autograd to explore backprop more.

Professor Stephen Emmott, Head of Computational Science at Microsoft Research Cambridge and author of '10 Billion', delivers a public lecture at Madingley Hall on 2 April 2014. Prof Emmott leads an international, interdisciplinary research programme and scientific team, centred on Microsoft's Computational Science Laboratory, in Cambridge, whose goal is to make, enable and accelerate transformational advances in science in areas of societal importance. His team is responsible for developing the Madingley Model – so called because it was first proposed during a meeting at Madingley Hall between UNEP-WCMC and the CEES group at Microsoft Research. The Madingley Model is a global ecosystem model (GEM) which simulates how the structure and function of ecosystems at global scales emerges from the underlying ecology of individual organisms. The lecture is chaired by Professor Paul Linden, G I Taylor Professor of Fluid Mechanics at Cambridge, and introduced by Dr Rebecca Lingwood, Director of Continuing Education. Please note that the lecture proper begins at the 04:08 minute point in the video.

The inside story of how Kinect – Microsoft’s 3D human pose recognition technology – was developed. How it happened, how it works, and how Microsoft Research Cambridge developed an essential part of the Kinect technology. The talk includes a technical description of Kinect from a scientific point of view, and also covers the benefits (and fun!) of being a part of computer science research.