#MicrosoftResearch

Robots are getting smarter, but how can their hardware match that growth? New Microsoft Research findings show that moving AI inference beyond the robot can improve task success, boost efficiency, and support more advanced physical AI workloads.

Since launching a year ago, the Microsoft Research Asia — Singapore lab has established a strong foundation, deepened collaboration across government, academia, and industry, and explored how frontier AI research can create real-world value:

Biology doesn't operate in silos, and neither should the AI representation of it. Quine is an early-stage research effort to create a multimodal world model of biology.…

Jennifer Neville did not want to go into computer science—but that’s exactly where she landed. Neville discusses the starts and stops that led to her professional sweet spot and her work identifying “surprising failures” making it hard for AI to handle…

Training AI agents with reinforcement learning can be challenging because their tools, context, and decision-making are managed by complex frameworks.…

StudentSim is a research system for evaluating and improving AI tutoring tools before they are tested with learners. It models how individuals may engage with tutors, giving feedback to improve tutor performance across subjects like chess, writing, and…

Lab Director Chris White has worked on research challenges with real-world implications—from new approaches to wartime data analysis to tools for combating human trafficking.…

For decades, a fundamental question about the difficulty of computing in high-dimensional spaces has resisted proof. New research resolves this question, removing a major theoretical obstacle to understanding the efficiency of randomized algorithms used…

MatterSim is expanding what AI can do for materials science—from faster large-scale simulations to MatterSim-MT, a new multi-task model for simulating properties beyond potential energy surfaces alone.

Using SocialReasoning Bench, we observed a stable pattern across models—agents execute competently, but fail to consistently improve the user’s position, even with explicit instructions to optimize for user interest.

Doug Burger, sustainability expert Amy Luers, and optimization researcher Ishai Menache examine the global emissions implications of datacenter operations, efficiency gains, and AI's potential across electrification, materials, and food systems.

On the Microsoft Research Podcast, Chief Scientist Jaime Teevan & researchers Jenna Butler, Jake Hofman, & Rebecca Janssen unpack the New Future of Work Report 2025 & explore what an ideal AI-driven working world looks like (it’s not just doing more).

In Episode 1 of “The Shape of Things to Come,” technologists Subutai Ahmad & Nicolò Fusi join Microsoft’s Doug Burger to compare how large language models work with how the human brain learns & what it means for AI’s future.