AI agents often fail because their instructions, or skills, are manually modified with no guarantee of improvement. Learn how SkillOpt turns skill editing into a training process, making agent behavior more reliable without changing model weights: msft.it/6012vsvEs

AI agents can't remember past conversations. They must constantly reload or retrieve context, which grows less efficient as tasks get longer and more complex. Memora solves this with a scalable memory system separating what’s stored from how it's retrieved: msft.it/6018vs3gC

Researchers introduce generative causal testing, which translates black box models into clear hypotheses and verifies them in the scanner, revealing what specific brain regions respond to in language. msft.it/6011vUtRd

Talos was built to help resolve a major bottleneck in genomic medicine: human review time. The open-source system recovered 90% of in-scope diagnoses while surfacing just 1.3 candidate variants per patient for expert review. msft.it/6014vUBwK

On the Microsoft Research Podcast, Microsoft’s Jaime Teevan, Jenna Butler, Jake Hofman, and Rebecca Janssen explore how looking at AI as more than a tool for automating tasks people are already capable of might open the door to new possibilities. msft.it/6011vo8cX

Can you remember a new password after listening to five hours of stories? A transformer can. AI researchers Subutai Ahmad and Nicolò Fusi explore the fundamental differences between human memory and machine intelligence with Microsoft CVP Doug Burger. msft.it/6016vllRa

ResNet has received the Longuet-Higgins Prize at CVPR 2026, recognizing research with proven, lasting impact. A decade after its publication, residual connections remain foundational to how modern AI systems are built, with over 320,000 citations and growing. msft.it/6017vl6bl

30x faster analytics, GPU kernels generated automatically from SQL, AI matched to lab-grown tumor models for cancer treatment, and LLMs that learn across tasks without retraining. Dive into the latest issue of Research Focus: msft.it/6010vcYZ4

Project Ire examined a timely malware sample and determined its intent through reverse engineering—identifying LOTUSLITE characteristics even as most major EDR tools did not detect it. msft.it/6011viy4N

A new research effort called Encrypted Spaces explores an architecture for collaborative applications where data is encrypted, and operations are cryptographically verifiable. Learn more: www.microsoft.com/en-us/resear...

New research in Nature Methods from Project Ex Vivo shows AI models learn more from diverse cell states than from scaled datasets alone, a finding that could reshape how therapies are matched to patients. msft.it/6013vgE8l

A BTS look a first timer's experience at the MSR lab at Microsoft Build 2026—featuring the demos, the builders, and the conversations that made it worth the trip.

That’s a wrap on Microsoft Build 2026. Huge thank you to the researchers and team who brought it to life on the floor this week. If you missed what we shared, check it out here: msft.it/6015vjfld

What do the people who build the foundations for others to build on like to build themselves? The answers may surprise you, everything from sandwiches to the future. #MSBuild

You don’t have to be a developer. You can just build stuff. Scott Hanselman on his first walk through the Microsoft Research Lab at #MSBuild.

The sights and sounds of Microsoft Research at #MSBuild. Come see us at the Lab inside the Gateway Pavilion for Day 2.

A three‑month pilot in a Midwestern bottling plant shows what happens when AI moves beyond chat and into decision-making, where constraints shift, stakes are real, and answers must hold. msft.it/6015vjYUN

Day 1 of Microsoft Build is a wrap. A lot happened today, and we brought some of our favorite tools to the floor for developers to get hands-on with. Explore it all: www.microsoft.com/en-us/resear...

Weather forecasts thousands of times faster than traditional supercomputers. Hear from Kenji Takeda on Aurora at the Microsoft Research Lab at #MSBuild. Learn more: msft.it/6018vjGUA

Agentic experiences powered by small models that fit on your own device. Hear from Maya Murad on MagenticLite at the Microsoft Research Lab at #MSBuild.

Microsoft Research is at BUILD 2026 this week, giving developers a hands-on look at some of the many AI-based models and tools they can use to accelerate innovation, enhance their capabilities, and quickly transform ideas into prototypes. msft.it/6010vjBUe

Welcome to Microsoft Build 2026. Step inside the Microsoft Research Lab, where developers are getting hands-on with the latest from MSR. Aurora’s forecasting models, Trellis 3D generation, Magentic UI, Mindful Memory, and more.

Evaluating agentic behaviors at scale, making the case for repositories over documents, and inviting researchers worldwide to tackle value alignment. Dive into the latest Research Focus. msft.it/6010vbyOi

Data Formulator introduces AI-powered analytics for enterprise data workflows. Data teams can easily bring enterprise data into an AI-ready workspace where users can explore, analyze, and visualize data with AI agents to turn raw data into actionable insights: msft.it/6013vZzUl

Understanding AI as an extension of human intelligence—not a replacement for it—offers a more grounded path for building trustworthy AI systems. Learn more: msft.it/6010vkoHk

Can AI reason about human values with real-world complexity? Microsoft Research Asia's new Global AI Values Challenge invites researchers across philosophy, ethics, law, and the social sciences to help find out. Register now: microsoft.github.io/ValueChallen...

Vega turns a full credential into a single proof, sharing only what is needed and nothing more, with performance that works in real apps. msft.it/6013vVRQc

Modern apps and services manage memory at a scale that didn't exist a decade ago. mimalloc is the open-source project quietly making that possible. msft.it/6015vpoa7

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