It will focus on large-scale machine learning, prediction and online-market design

May 3, 2012 11:33 GMT  ·  By

Starting today, the number of Microsoft Research labs around the world will increase with the debut of a New York City lab, the Redmond-based software giant has announced.

Microsoft has already expanded its reach around the world with 12 labs available across four continents, and it is now making a new step towards computing research.

The new lab will feature an initial team of fifteen researchers, including three founding members, all of which come from Yahoo! Research, namely David Pennock, Duncan Watts and John Langford.

The new lab will be based in Manhattan and will be led by Jennifer Chayes, who is also the managing director of Microsoft Research New England.

“The addition of Microsoft Research New York City reflects the company’s long-term investment in basic research,” said Rick Rashid, Microsoft chief research officer and head of Microsoft Research.

“In concert with Microsoft’s product groups, Microsoft Research guides and influences the company’s pursuit of applying transformative technologies and new technology trends to its products and services.”

The New York City lab will be focused on complementary research areas, including computational and experimental social science, algorithmic economics, and machine learning. Moreover, it will investigate information retrieval.

Microsoft expects for the new lab to work closely with the Microsoft Research New England lab, to extend the work in the aforementioned areas.

Researchers will be looking into in large-scale machine learning, as well as into prediction and online-market design. Moreover, they will be focused on the development of new techniques in computational and online experimental social science.

“The Microsoft Research New York City lab reflects an opportunity for Microsoft Research researchers and developers worldwide,” Chayes said, “to interact deeply with the vibrant academic and tech communities in the New York metropolitan area, as well as an opportunity to attract great new talent to Microsoft.”

The group of founding members of the New York City lab also includes Dan Goldstein and Siddharth Suri, both experts in experimental and behavioral social science; Sharad Goel and Jake Hofman, specialized in computational social science; and David Rothschild, with expertise in economics and prediction markets.