>> Please welcome,
Global Managing Director
Microsoft Research
Outreach, Sandy Blyth.
>> Hello, good morning.
>> Good morning.
>> Good morning. Coffee is
served in the back there,
let's go grab some of
that. Good morning.
It's really a pleasure for me and
a privilege to welcome you,
and to be your host for
this North American
Faculty Summit.
It was great to see
so many of you at
the reception last night.
I hope you enjoyed that.
I saw a lot of old friends,
and a lot of new faces,
so we're really excited
to be hosting you
this week at Faculty Summit.
It's a really busy time of
the year for you. I know that.
There's a crazy number
of things you
could be doing at this point
in the academic year,
plus some personal commitments
and opportunities.
So, the fact that
you chose to spend
a couple of days with us here in
Redmond is a real privilege,
and we do thank you
for being here.
Faculty Summit for us is
literally a year in
the making each year.
So, it's something that we
circle on the calendar.
It's a real highlight
for the folks at MSR.
We're really dedicated to
making this worth your while.
I hope it is.
This is, well, it's
the North America version
of our Faculty Summit.
We do Faculty Summits
all around the world.
This is our 19th here in
Redmond and I hope that this
is one of the best of them.
In addition to about 200
academic researchers and faculty,
we'll have a number of
Microsoft professionals.
We are also streaming
the plenary sessions
live over the web.
We had several 100 registrations
for the planneries and we'll be
recording the breakout sessions
for replay and
access to later on.
So, if there's something
that you really wanted to
see and just couldn't get
to it while you were here,
it'll be available
to you later on.
This year's Faculty Summit,
also we have
a very high percentage
of our most senior
technical leadership,
our technical fellows,
distinguished scientists,
and engineers.
So, we're really
looking forward to what
we hope will be a rich,
engaging dialogue with you.
Well, this year, our Faculty
Summit topic is systems,
and it's truly never been
a better time to be
in systems research.
There's so much going on
that systems research is
going to be powering.
With all of the
developments in the cloud,
the proliferation of
different devices
and experiences out on the edge,
all that's going on in new
hardware and software,
architectures have
to be rethought,
fundamentally new ways of
developing applications,
the end of Moore's law.
There's so much going on here.
We really are excited about
the topics that we'll be
able to show you today.
We got to the Systems
Focus not only
because of the focus and
importance of systems
research today,
but the feedback from you and
your prior attendance
at Faculty Summit said,
"We want to keep
the topics narrow."
So, we've gone
narrow and deep with
this topic as we did
last year with
the artificial intelligence.
We think that that leads to a
richer, more engaged
conversation.
So, each of you is
closely related
to the research interests
of your colleagues.
We've also limited
the attendance,
so there's only about 200
folks here today.
Again, we're very privileged
that you would be
willing to join us.
We'll find throughout the agenda
that we're trying to build in
not only time for
deep and engaging conversations
but also some time to network.
That also was feedback
that we received from
you in the past.
I hope that you find
Faculty Summit to be one of
those really rare fora
that you can come to,
that balances an intimacy
with a scholarly approach,
that is rewarding
and interesting,
and that you get to network
and meet new colleagues as
well as renew friendships
with some old colleagues.
Here's just a brief view
of the agenda,
you've got this in
the handout, so we've got it.
It's also available
to you on the web.
Hopefully, you will see
here the kind of
balance that we're
trying to achieve
between deep and broad.
In addition, some
new things that we
have based on feedback from
prior Faculty Summits,
we're having
our technical fellows
and distinguished scientists and
engineer host something that we
call One Table, One Topic.
So, it's kind of a Birds
of a Feather session
that we'll offer over the lunch.
If there's a particular
topic or somebody at
MSR that you're particularly
keen to spend a little bit
of extra time with,
and maybe talk
about some areas of
interest or common research,
look for those tables and
we'll also do this tomorrow.
If you want to sign up
and host a bit of a Birds
of a Feather over
the lunchtime, please do.
We also are trying to help
folks get to know each other
because there are
a lot of new faces,
both at MSR and in
the academic community,
they're attending today.
So, we have these researcher
spotlights that help you get
familiar with some of
the research areas
of your colleagues
as well as get to know
them a little bit.
So, I, for example,
learned that Laura Waller
has over 100 cousins.
I thought my family reunions
where a food fight,
but thank you Laura for
sharing that part of it.
It's super interesting
to know that about you.
Faculty Summit around
the world tends
to be kind of
a once a year event,
but we are looking for
opportunities to try and maintain
a dialogue and collaboration and
engagement across
the communities.
So, here's a few ways that we
hope that you can
keep in touch with
Microsoft Research
and communicate
with researchers in MSR.
We're quite keen to have you
to engage with us this way.
Well, as I say, it was great
to see so many of you at
the reception last night.
I hope you enjoyed it.
We're at the Hyatt Regency
down in Lake Washington.
I had two jobs for
Faculty Summit,
one of which was to
arrange for good weather.
I'm thinking so far,
we're doing okay because that was
a spectacular venue last night.
We'll be back there
for dinner tonight.
I'm excited to be
able to host you at
the dinner there this evening
and I really do hope
you enjoyed it.
It's a bit of a reveal,
as you come in, when
you come driving in,
it looks like it is
a construction zone,
it's a brand new hotel,
it's beautiful. I
hope you enjoy it.
Let us know through
your feedback, though,
if that's a great venue for
you and if you enjoyed
the time there.
The Summit is all about
fostering collaboration, though.
It's about scholarly
dialogue and exchange,
but we want to make it
a special time as well.
So, we'll be announcing
some things here
for the first time.
We'll also be providing
some exclusives to you to say
thank you for joining us today.
I actually have
the opportunity to do one
of those reveals
here this morning.
So, I'd like to talk
to you about some of
the Fellowship and Grant
programs very briefly
that we have at MSR.
Hopefully, most of
you are familiar with
our North America PhD Fellowship.
This is very similar to
Fellowship Programs that we have
another geographies
around the world.
It's intended for PhD students in
their third and fourth year
to full tuition plus
an annual stipend.
We also have what we refer to as
our Dissertation Grant Program
in North America,
which is aimed really
at fourth year students
trying to get especially a
diverse and underrepresented
populations
over the hump to finally get
their thesis and
their degree granted.
To that, though, we've added
two new fellowships that
we're announcing today,
and details are available out
in the lobby at the booth,
and will be released on
the web this morning.
One of which we are calling
the Ada Lovelace Fellowship.
This is a North American
Fellowship, again,
aimed at diverse and
underrepresented populations
in computer science.
There are some particular
structural challenges that
historically have
touched that group.
So, what we're trying to do is
get a little bit earlier
in their career.
This is intended for
a diverse and
underrepresented groups in
their second year of
their PhD program
and that scholarship
runs a full three years.
As well, we're actually
bringing back an old friend,
it's the Faculty
Fellows' program.
So, this is intended for Faculty,
Young and Career Faculty.
So, those who are within
the first five years of
entering the professoriate
to try, and again,
provide some additional funding
to get you through
those first few years
as you're building
up your research base.
We're really excited
about these especially in
an environment where
the funding can be difficult,
to bring both our existing and
some new student and
faculty programs, too.
We're also bringing
some experiences.
So, this year we'll be
having our first PhD forum,
which will include PhD students
from the Fellowship,
the Dissertation Grant.
I think Valerie Taylor
maybe here,
she has an NSF funded
organization called
The Future Leadership and
the Professoriate
intended, again,
to take under-represented
groups and
provide them with
experiences that
allow them to compete
more effectively for
tenured positions in academia.
We'll be including
the Flip- hello Valerie.
Thank you. Good. I'm
glad that you're here.
We'll be including them as
well in collaboration with
the University of Washington,
which was one of
the Flip Alliance Schools in
our first PhD Summit
later on this fall.
So, let's get started.
I do want to take
a moment to introduce
my boss and the head
of MSR Labs and MSRAI,
Eric Horvitz, to say a few words.
So, welcome, Eric.
Good to see you.
>> Thank you very much, Sandy.
>> I wanted to add
a personal welcome.
Thanks for joining us
it's so great to see
so many familiar faces as
well as so many new faces,
I'd love to meet over
the next couple of days.
I'm so impressed by
the new approach
to faculty summits being
focused dramatically.
We used to have a much
larger events that span,
that was kind of
representative of
the wonders of Microsoft
Research which
span all of computer
science closer labs.
But I think the focused
events dramatically
are much more
productive for folks
and a little bit more
community-centric.
The AI event last year
was just fabulous
and I'm expecting the same
from the system event this year.
Leadership and innovation
in systems and networking
is just a critical area
for Microsoft Research
across our labs.
Of course, it's a critical area
for Microsoft corporation.
So, it's great to see so
many of you here today,
see so many people folks from
our divisions as well as
Microsoft Research as well
people who traveled out here.
So, I'm looking forward
to that exchange.
I'll actually be around
during the event.
I'll be coming to dinner tonight,
and have one of
these rare moments
this afternoon to present
a technical talk of
some work we're doing,
with my smaller research team
on AI for AI systems.
So, thanks everybody and
thanks for all your work
and Sandy as well.
>> Good. Pretty good.
Thanks very much.
All right. So, let's get started.
With that, I want to
introduce along with Dan Fay,
the program chair for
this year's faculty summit,
Donald Kossmann.
Donald has joined us
actually years ago
from ETH Zurich where he was
on faculty for 13 years.
Has an extensive in
rich academic career
which he tells
me is more impressive
than even words on paper.
So, I'm not going to
take you through that.
I am curious so
about that fun fact.
I wonder if there's
a cause and effect
relationship there.
He did four startups
because he had
four kids or he
had four kids because
he had for startups,
but that's very fair of you
Donald to have done that.
So, welcome to the stage please
our program chair,
Donald Kossman.
>> Okay. Thank you very much.
So just to start,
I'm done both with children
and with startups.
I think my wife is
very happy about that,
probably more happy about
being done with startups
and with children. But anyway.
So, I want to just pile on
what Sandy and Eric said.
Thank you so much for being here.
We know that you
have busy schedules
and my children are actually,
I think this very moment they're
swimming in Lake Washington.
So, there are other things to do.
So, thank you very
much for coming.
So, why are we here?
I think that's how
I want to start.
In some sense all our dreams
have come true and you probably,
I've heard this for
the last 20 years.
Everybody in every year,
we keep on saying it's
more through computing,
the age of computing is here,
but I'm going to share
a small anecdote.
When I got my PhD in
the '90s, in the mid '90s,
I graduated in Germany
and I did something that is
called pointers whistling,
and I got a 10 to
15 percent advantage
out of my technique.
I was very, very proud and
then I went to the US and
the people said,10 to
15 percent, that doesn't matter.
If it's not an order
of magnitude or
at least a factor of
three, it doesn't matter.
So, now, 20 years later,
I can tell you that
one percent actually matters.
One percent at the scale that we
operate is huge benefits,
in any regard.
So, one percent now matters
and, of course, now,
thinking back about my PhD times,
well 10-15 percent, yeah,
right, if I would do that
today, this is great.
So, just how good the times offer
us for people who optimized
and I'm an optimizer person.
These things matter now
and everything that
we're going to
do is going to matter much
more and this is great.
Now, of course, this
comes with expectations.
Now, when I do an optimization,
then it needs to have huge,
huge impact and that's
really why we are here,
because we still kind of have
opportunities for
orders of magnitude.
But if they are not relevant,
if they're not at the point
where it really matters,
then it is irrelevant.
One percent at the right place
matters a lot whereas an order
of magnitude somewhere
at an irrelevant place
doesn't matter.
One of the things
that we are trying to
achieve here together is kind of
finding the places where
we can really push
forward and make
a huge difference.
So, Microsoft understands that.
One of the things
that I want to kind
of say at the beginning,
I want to kind of
clear up with some of
the myths that maybe are
in the community about
Microsoft Research.
Microsoft really understands
this importance of
finding the right spot
and how difficult it is.
So, I know that many of you care
a lot about the Silicon
Valley lab and what happens,
in particular, in systems.
I am just going to
share my personal thing
and I think it was a mistake.
I think that Microsoft
knows that it was
a mistake and I think
Microsoft with this commitment
that it is making to
Microsoft Research and to
the scientific
community is really
showing that it is trying
to correct this mistake.
So, this is what
Microsoft researchers
and I've highlighted some of
the important things
and that's where
the myths I want to clarify is.
We are growing, and
this is we're growing,
we're hiring in all areas of
core computer science and we're
growing not only
in in the people,
in research and in our exposure
and our engagement.
So, with what Sandy was
mentioning how we engage
with you are we're growing,
but we're also growing
in our spread.
So, our recent member of
the family is
the Montreal, a lab,
so we're also opening new labs
and I think this is
important and I would
love you to share
this and internalize
this and share this in
your communities and
with your students.
Of course, we are
very interested in
your students as
part of this growth.
This is a slide that
I've shared from Eric.
At the top is the Microsoft
Research mission,
the advancing
the state of the art,
which is what we do with you,
where we engage with you in
the scientific communities,
rapidly transfer
this innovation into
impact and just increasing
the vibrancy of the company.
This mission has been
unchanged since 1991.
The bottom layer is
something that Eric actually
cares a lot about and keeps on
saying and this is our fabric,
our culture, our value system.
This is creativity just having
ideas and we enjoy
the ideas, collaboration,
working with you, working
together within
Microsoft Research,
within Microsoft product groups
but also with you.
Diversity and joy, having fun.
The important thing
also is of course also
our competitors they've
understood that
they need to do research
and create research labs.
But this fabric is not
something that you
build in five years.
This takes a long,
long time and I think this is
what makes Microsoft
Research so unique.
This is clearly I
get to asked a lot,
why did you go to Microsoft
Research from ETH which
is probably assumed
the most wonderful place
on the planet,
being a professor at ETH.
But it's really this kind of
special culture and value system
that makes the difference.
So, of course, Microsoft
also expects us to generate
value and there's
a lot of value kind of
in working with
the business grow,
helping the business,
creating new business.
One of the things
I've highlighted here
is what we are
doing exactly here.
We are kind of the ears and
the eyes of
the company and we can
engage with you in a way that
product groups cannot do.
This is a very important part of
Microsoft Research and
Sandy's organization
helps everybody,
me as a researcher or
my team as research team
to do exactly that.
But the real kind of
expectation of the company
is that we create surprises.
That's really what
Microsoft Research is about
and and we have
all these dialogues
and what gives us
the most pleasure is if we give
these talks to
our executives and we see
the glowing eyes where
they say, "Oh yeah, yeah.
I hadn't thought about that."
Of course, again
we can only create
surprises together
with you because
creating some of these surprises
are putting many pieces of
the puzzle together and you are
the people who create
many of these pieces.
Tomorrow, I'm going to
give some examples of
our today's surprises
but I'll today,
just for the
introduction I'll give
some examples of
historic surprises.
So one surprise is the Kinect
which hopefully all of
you have heard about
which got it's origin from
Microsoft Research and it's
a wonderful piece of technology.
And I think it has
made many children,
definitely my children-
among the four children,
I have three daughters
and they love
the dancing games that
only works with Kinect.
Whoops, can we go back please?
Yeah, sorry. Yeah
there because I have
this red button which I'm
not allowed to press.
It's always dangerous to get
something with
a red button in your hand.
But anyway. But now I'm not
pressing it. Okay, anyway.
So that's the Kinect,
that's one of the surprises.
Another one is actually one
where Eric was involved
in is from 1998 which we would
call the first smartphone.
This is another surprise
and, of course,
we are very proud of
being the source of
that and it took 10 years
plus to make it really work.
So this is where
I want to get at.
So, all our dreams
have come true,
that is correct, but that doesn't
mean that we don't
have to work anymore.
This is a chart we often
think about, well,
we want to change
the world and we
want to innovate
and we often hear
this formula that innovation
is invention times impact.
And there is a big mountain of
innovation is what we as
researchers do all the time.
We do the science,
and we create new ideas,
and we invent.
Then there's another mountain
which is creating impact
out of these ideas,
pre-creating products and so on.
These mountains, if you look
at it at the timescale,
somehow you have to have an idea
before you at some point
get to the product,
but there's a big deep
valley between that.
In the case of the smartphone,
this valley was 10 years.
It took 10 years from
the first prototype of
a smartphone out of the lab of
Microsoft Research
until nine years until
Apple really got smartphones out.
Part of what we do at
Microsoft Research is
to create this stretch,
because we've realized
that we can no longer
just hope that somehow
our ideas will be picked up.
So that is why we work very
closely with the product groups
and I'm going to talk about that.
In some sense for you,
this is a great opportunity
because you're on
the invention side and you also-
many of you have start-ups
and want to do that
but some of you
maybe just want to be on
the invention side and
you have through us,
you have a vehicle to get
your inventions to impact.
This is an opportunity that
we would love you to use.
Of course, also in
our own interests but also in
your interest and in
the interest of making
the world a better place.
For us, of course, it
is a big challenge
because we loved the science
part but we also love
the building stuff and
bringing it out part and
during this stretch often
it's in my everyday work.
For people who are
too much in love with
the science pushing them to go to
the Impact is a one thing
that I have to do but also
for some people who are just
about impact pushing
them back into the sides
is also one thing that I do.
So here's just a little bit
how we work with product groups,
because we work very closely
with the product groups,
but there are- we play
a special role and this
is what I was trying to to
visualize with the stretch.
We do a lot of things that
the product groups cannot do.
We have a long-term perspective,
we sometimes have
a disruptive idea perspective,
our funding is completely
independent of product groups.
So this hasn't changed and this
is where we have
our funding and we are not
obliged to work with
product groups nobody is
and we have- there are
more product groups
that we can even serve
and we choose what we do.
But when we do choose to
work with product groups we
take different perspectives,
we take risks,
we are more agile and that is- we
are about taking
risks and of course,
we collaborate with you which
is- and we collaborate
with our competitors.
We have very open discussions
and work with Google and
Facebook and all of
these researchers and engineers
in those organizations.
I also want to comment
a little bit on
our relationship with you.
There are two forums
where we interact.
One is in the scientific
communities and I think we
are partners, equal
right partners.
We write papers together
and I hope we will
continue to do that.
We serve on program
committees together we
do all the service work
together and I
think academics and
Microsoft Research researchers
are interchangeable in
the scientific communities.
I think most of you
don't even care in
the scientific
community whether you
are now talking to
Microsoft Research person.
The other more
interesting relationship
is the is the talent side.
Of course, we heavily
depend on you
because you are the source of all
ultimately of all
talent but we also
help you with our internship
program and we want to
really intensify that and
this is a huge part of
what we do and now it's
summer and your interns are in
Building 99 here and we're
having a great, great time.
But I think we're also helping
you with this program.
The little bit more
subtle things we
also compete with you are,
you are looking for recruiting
you junior faculty,
we are looking for recruiting,
so that's a little bit
of a healthy,
I think, aspect of
our relationship.
But what you shouldn't
forget is that we
also create and grow talent
that you will hire later.
So there are
many career trajectories
where students go to
Microsoft Research and get
this final boost
to then go back to
academia and do really
outstanding research in academia.
So with that, I want to come to
the systems part and
also introduce
our first keynote speaker.
So, you've all seen
some pictures like
that where there's- today
there's computing everywhere,
we have this public cloud,
we have private clouds and we
have all of these devices,
and our CEO Satya Nadella,
he often talks about
the Intelligent Edge and
the Intelligent Cloud.
So, the Intelligent Cloud
is of course,
the public cloud and
maybe some parts of
the private cloud,
and the Edge are all
of these gazillions of
devices that go around
and form one big system.
As we are a company
and now I want to
introduce our first
keynote speaker
who essentially is
the mastermind of Azure.
Azure is kind of the way
we draw boxes around
these things.
So Azure is of course,
our public cloud but Azure or
Azure Stack are also
our private cloud
and the two together
form the hybrid cloud
and Azure results
are our IOT or Edge story
with the smaller devices.
So, the mastermind behind that is
Mark Russinovich who
is the CTO of Azure.
He got his PhD from
Carnegie Mellon University,
and since then, has had
a very fruitful career with
many, many activities.
So he's really passionate
about distributed systems,
about security, about
operating systems.
He's been working on Windows
and Azure obviously,
for a long time and he
has created many tools,
so he's the author of
the system integration
administration tools for Windows.
He had several stints,
among others at IBM.
But in 1996, he started
a company called Winternals,
which was eventually acquired
by Microsoft in 2006,
and since 2006 he has been
with Microsoft and has
created essentially-
helped create
Azure and holding Azure together.
One of the very interesting
facts about Mark is that he's
a very passionate
speaker but also
a very passionate author
and he wrote books,
not only technical books but also
fictional books and
fictional kind of
technical fictional books and I
haven't read them but I've-
now I have to- three books.
But I've actually looked in
it and I'm going to read
one of them and you can
you can look them up.
So with that, please welcome
Mark Russinovich.
Thank you very much.
>> Thanks so much.
