Equipping communities to influence AI through involvement in AI development pipelines can improve AI and help communities realize the potential AI has to serve them well. news.microsoft.com/source/featu...

New in Research Focus: Cloud efficiency, smarter agentic cost reduction, a randomized trial on 3D telemedicine, and an open call for inclusive AI language projects in Africa. msft.it/6010vTpuG

New tools, models, repos, and papers out of Microsoft Research are here. Use AI and agents? It's worth watching: • MagenticLite from MSR AI Frontiers • Agentic GitHub workflows • Verification‑first agents • Meaning‑matching fine‑tuning • AI transition + the economy Watch: msft.it/6041vRsTB

Introducing GridSFM, a small foundation model that can predict AC optimal power flow in milliseconds, boosting efficiency and unlocking cost savings. Learn how GridSFM gives grid operators direct visibility into congestion, stability, and system health: msft.it/6018vucjs

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. msft.it/6017vPamT

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. msft.it/6011vPOLF

Tyger moves the most demanding MRI processing to the cloud, helping researchers turn raw signals into readable images – meaning results in hours rather than days or weeks. msft.it/6010vMCSa

Designing AI isn’t just about performance. It’s about tradeoffs that affect people and the planet. In “The Shape of Things to Come,” hear Doug Burger, Amy Luers, and Ishai Menache on why applying AI responsibly may be key to addressing the climate crisis. msft.it/6017vMPyt

Microsoft researchers share advances in building and operating large-scale distributed systems, spanning datacenters, networking, and the growing intersection with AI during NSDI ’26. Explore the work: msft.it/6011vz9EF

Research Focus: AI agents leaking enterprise data, a smarter OS for cloud deployment, and new research on how to actually structure AI use at work. msft.it/6016vKxQm

Safe agents don’t guarantee a safe ecosystem of interconnected agents. Microsoft Research examines what breaks when AI agents interact and why network-level risks require new approaches. Learn more: www.microsoft.com/en-us/resear...

Coming May 14 at Microsoft Research Forum: a new release and demo from MSR AI Frontiers. Plus new work on Agentic GitHub Workflows, Real-time agent verification, Energy-based fine-tuning, and Guiding the AI transition. Register now: www.microsoft.com/en-us/resear...

Congratulations to Philippe Laban, Jennifer Neville, and collaborators on their Best Paper Award at ICLR 2026 for “LLMs Get Lost In Multi-Turn Conversation.” msft.it/6017vE12f

AutoAdapt automates the design and tuning of domain adaptation workflows for large language models. It improves performance without requiring additional compute, making deployment more accessible: msft.it/6013vDkpX

Today we're sharing a major Skala update—new paper and model release. Skala is a deep-learning exchange-correlation functional for DFT that reaches 2.8 kcal/mol on GMTKN55, wins 32 of its 55 subsets, and leads on accuracy short of double hybrids at semi-local DFT cost

LLMs that get lost in conversation. Robots that learn zero-shot. Diffusion models built for imbalanced data. This is the ICLR edition of Research Focus. msft.it/6017vB2nT

A new perspective from Microsoft Research published in Cell makes the case that generative models are what oncology needs next, capable of integrating genomics, imaging, clinical data, and more into a unified system for cancer discovery. msft.it/6013QhkUS

We are thrilled to share Microsoft has been awarded the 2026 Franz Edelman Award by INFORMS for using ML, optimization, and generative AI to orchestrate cloud fulfillment decisions at global scale. msft.it/6017QC6kP

Congratulations to Dr. Jacki O’Neill on receiving the 2026 ACM SIGCHI Societal Impact Award! As founding director of Microsoft Research Africa, Kenya, she advances human-centered, equitable AI designed to serve communities across Africa and beyond. msft.it/6013Q7u0x

Microsoft Research is at #CHI2026 (@chi.acm.org) this week. The question driving our work this year isn't about AI technical capabilities. It's whether it works well for everyone. msft.it/6015Q7PtJ

Newly published in Optica from Microsoft Research: a first-of-its-kind materials-screening framework for glass-based data storage, identifying which intrinsic material properties actually drive performance in femtosecond laser writing. msft.it/6014QfbFo

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). msft.it/6016Q4U92

Today, we welcome the 2026 Microsoft Research Fellowship cohort, an inspiring global community of fellows and advisors helping to shape what’s next across science, technology, and society. Join us in celebrating this year’s recipients: msft.it/6013Q45bX

For people who speak the world’s most popular languages, AI is helping improve their health care, education and more. But what about the millions who speak less common languages? Microsoft researchers and data scientists are working to close the gap. msft.it/6012QNPVw

In the latest Research Focus: LLM sentiment in cultural context, robot assembly learning, smarter AI agents, verified Rust code, and CHI 2026. msft.it/6016Q2k8K

ADeLe profiles AI models across a set of core abilities and compares them to task requirements. Published in Nature, this framework enables accurate prediction of model performance on tasks they have not encountered before: msft.it/6015QLEuN

Deploying AI across cultures is more than translation. Atlas is an interactive playbook that can help with cross-cultural deployment of AI applications. msft.it/6015QINXc

Multilingual AI means making hard tradeoffs. Translate or fine-tune? One model or many? Vibhasha is an interactive playbook to help you build multicultural apps and make those decisions with confidence. msft.it/6016QI3gu

Not every language has the AI infrastructure others do. Paza is an interactive playbook to help you build robust speech models for low-resource languages with benchmarking tools to help you choose the right approach. microsoft.github.io/Paza/

AI should work for everyone, wherever they are, and whatever language they speak. Introducing three interactive playbooks by Microsoft Research. These guides are for organizations building AI across languages, cultures, and markets. Meet Paza, Vibhasha, and Atlas. msft.it/6014QxJnm

AsgardBench evaluates whether embodied agents can revise their plans based on visual observations as tasks unfold. By focusing on perception-driven planning, it exposes key limitations and guides improvements in agent reliability. msft.it/6015QQ4fZ

GroundedPlanBench evaluates whether VLMs can plan actions and determine where they should occur. V2GP can improve both planning and spatial grounding, leading to more reliable robot behavior. Learn more: msft.it/6016QQQTg

Are machines truly intelligent? 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. msft.it/6015QsiOZ

MicroLED datacenter networking, LLM-driven GPU design, real-time multimodal AI, agent memory and learning from experience, plus new benchmarks for interactive planning and a new podcast about the future of machine intelligence. msft.it/6016Qs9io

With advances happening fast, what will the future look like? Microsoft Research Labs lead Doug Burger explores this question via the lens of machine intelligence, climate & more in the podcast “The Shape of Things to Come.” Full episodes coming soon. msft.it/6013QW7P5

As AI agents transition from simple chatbots to complex autonomous systems, finding and fixing their errors gets harder. AgentRx is an automated diagnostic framework that pinpoints critical failures and supports more transparent, resilient agentic systems: msft.it/6012QlyiM

With advances happening fast, what will the future look like? Microsoft research lead Doug Burger explores this question via the lens of machine intelligence, climate & more in the podcast series “The Shape of Things to Come.” Full episodes coming soon. msft.it/6018Qcv5i

You’re no longer just doing the work—you’re directing. In our latest episode, @sineadbovell.bsky.social explores how the future of work is taking shape, and what it means as AI systems start to feel less like tools and more like teammates. Watch all episodes of On Second Thought: msft.it/6015QcqMd

PlugMem transforms AI agents’ interaction histories into structured, reusable knowledge. It integrates with any agent, supports diverse tasks and memory types, and maximizes decision quality while significantly reducing memory token use: msft.it/6017Qc9vv

Multimodal reasoning with Phi-4-reasoning-vision, new work on scaling LLM inference, benchmarking AI agents in network operations, cinematic video generation, adaptive evaluation for LLMs, and using AI to improve individual and population health. www.linkedin.com/pulse/phi-4-...

The latest Microsoft Research Forum episode is now available on-demand. Explore new ARO, Dion2, Magentic Marketplace, OptiMind, Agent Lightning, and Healthbots. Register to watch: events.microsoft.com/flow/ms/rese...

Vision-language models improve multimodal systems, but can make them slower, costlier, and harder to deploy. Learn how Phi-4-reasoning-vision-15B, a compact and fast multimodal reasoning model, blends strengths of different methods while reducing their limits: msft.it/6014Q5X0u

CORPGEN enables AI agents to manage dozens of interdependent tasks simultaneously in simulated workplace environments. It maintains performance under heavy multitasking, delivering up to 3.5x higher completion rates than leading baselines. msft.it/6015QbHoH

Long-term glass data storage advances, new work on transferable reasoning, multi-turn AI safety testing, multilingual AI design, and evaluating how models actually think. msft.it/6015QksvJ

As synthetic media grows, verifying what’s real, and the origin of content, matters more than ever. Our latest report explores media integrity and authentication methods, their limits, and practical paths toward trustworthy provenance across images, audio, and video. msft.it/6012QnGgi

Project Silica introduces new techniques for encoding data in borosilicate glass, as described in the journal Nature. These advances lower media cost and simplify writing and reading systems while supporting 10,000-year data preservation: msft.it/6017QVklt

Coming March 3 at 9:00 AM PT, our first Microsoft Research Forum episode of the year. New ARO, Dion2, Magentic Marketplace, OptiMind, Agent Lightning, and Healthbots. Register to watch: www.microsoft.com/en-us/resear...

We are pleased to announce that Doug Burger, Technical Fellow and Corporate Vice President at Microsoft Research, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering Class of 2026 for advancing cloud-scale computing and networking with field-programmable systems. msft.it/6011Quo5H

Speech recognition for low-resource languages, medical foundation models, space-based ML, and brain-computer interfaces: msft.it/6016QPDpp

This research looks at why Predictive Inverse Dynamics Models often outperform standard Behavior Cloning in imitation learning. By using simple predictions of what happens next, PIDMs reduce ambiguity and learn from far fewer demonstrations. Learn more: msft.it/6018QMkdO