6967 Computing News March03
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COMPUTING RESEARCH NEWS A Publication of the Computing Research Association March 2001 Vol. 13/No. 2 Microsoft Research By Daniel T. Ling in San Francisco, Cambridge (United of Asian languages. An exciting automatically to changing query Kingdom), and Beijing. The Bay research result to come out of Beijing workloads. The system uses the actual The seventh in a series of CRN Area Research Center (BARC) in is a fundamental understanding of the workload and the query optimizer to articles describing the activities of CRA’s San Francisco was started in 1995. perform “what-if” analysis on new industry laboratory members. An exciting project from BARC is configurations, suggests changes to In 1991, when Microsoft was TerraServer (see http://www. the user, and can implement them still a fairly small company and terraserver.microsoft.com), one of the automatically if desired. Our work many businesses were scaling back world’s largest online databases con- with the SQL Server team also their research efforts, Microsoft taining about 3TB of satellite, aerial resulted in new data-mining features made a strong commitment to basic photography, and topographic maps built into the database, including research in computer science by from around the world. This effort algorithms from MSR, a query lan- establishing the first research lab involved close cooperation with the guage for data-mining, and a pro- by a software company. U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), gramming interface for third-party It reflected the recognition that which provided the majority of the components. the age of the microprocessor had data for the United States. For their We are also making significant only just begun and that improve- work, Jim Gray and Tom Barclay Daniel Ling contributions in the natural language ments in silicon, storage, and commu- were recognized by USGS with the area, working closely with our prod- nications technology, combined with John Wesley Powell award. sampling issues in the new image- uct group partners. This has resulted the right software, would continue to Two years later, in 1997, we based rendering approach to in the grammar-checking capabilities dramatically transform every aspect of started our lab in Cambridge, which computer graphics. that first appeared in Word95, as well our lives. Over the past ten years, the maintains close ties with Cambridge MSR has a goal to research tech- as new features in the upcoming ver- lab has grown substantially and has University. The Cambridge Lab con- nologies that we believe will drive sion of Office. Karen Jensen and contributed to almost every major ducts research in a number of areas, changes in computing over the next George Heidorn, who founded the product at Microsoft. We now have including programming languages, decade. As an industrial laboratory, Natural Language Processing group, more than 500 researchers working computer vision, learning, and sys- our key focus is to work closely with were among the earliest researchers to on a wide range of projects–from tems. Their work on information the Microsoft development groups join MSR, even before its official cre- quantum computing to operating retrieval has made important contri- and support the corporate vision of ation. The group is now undertaking systems, from programming languages butions to Microsoft products. “empowering people through great an ambitious project to create a rich and tools to signal-processing and In 1998 we founded the lab in software any time, any place, and on semantic network to support more speech recognition. Beijing, which collaborates with any device.” Over the past decade complex natural-language-under- Microsoft Research (MSR) main- many universities and research insti- we have made many contributions to standing tasks such as machine tains four laboratories scattered across tutions in China and elsewhere in Microsoft products and services. translation. the globe: our main facility near the Asia. The Beijing lab focuses on two Our research in data-mining and Two years ago, MSR started Microsoft corporate campus in main areas: multimedia, and making databases has resulted in a number of the Programmer Productivity Redmond, Washington, and facilities computers vastly simpler for speakers contributions to SQL Server, includ- Research Center led by Amitabh ing novel self-tuning components in Srivastava. We recognized the need Inside CRN SQL Server that allow SQL to adapt Microsoft Research Continued on Page 12 CRA Elects New Officers ....................2 New CRA Members ............................4 Mentoring Graduate Students.............3 Taulbee Survey Results.................5-11 Expanding the Pipeline .......................4 Professional Opportunities...........13-20 PAID U.S. POSTAGE Transitions in Washington PERMIT NO. 993 NONPROFIT ORG. WASHINGTON, DC WASHINGTON, By Lisa Thompson On January 20, George W. Bush the Office of Science and Technology partly due to the outcome of the 2000 became the President of the United Policy. This is not altogether unusual, election, but also to the initial effects States, after a very short transition however. Although President Clinton of a rules change, made when the period—incoming presidents usually named a Science Adviser shortly after Republicans took over House have more than two months to make his first election, few chief executives leadership in 1995, that imposed a transition plans. In most cases, a tran- before him bothered to do so at an six-year term-limit on committee sition team is put together and mem- early point. chairmanships. bers fan out across the federal As expected, President Bush The most significant aspect of government, assembling briefing made education his first major initia- this change for the computing papers for every cabinet department tive. As we go to press, however, research community is that the term and independent agency. Tradition there is little information regarding of the long-time Chairman of the dictates that the outgoing Admin- what directions the President will Judiciary Committee expired. This istration be cooperative within take with respect to science and allowed the chairmanship to pass to reason. The briefing papers alert the research policy. Neither is there a the second-most-senior committee President and his new team to the long-term decision about who will member, who happens to have been major issues associated with each run the National Science the Chairman of the House Science executive function. Many transition Foundation. Current Director Rita Committee, James Sensenbrenner team members end up with jobs in Colwell is apparently staying on, at (R-WI). the new Administration. least until further notice. Rep. Sherwood Boehlert succeeds One of the side affects of Moreover, the regular budget Sensenbrenner as Chairman of the President Bush’s truncated transition cycle will be pushed back. The Science Committee. Boehlert is a is that fewer appointment decisions Presidential budget is usually released ten-term Congressman from New have been made as the President sits in early February, but it is likely to be York who has been an active member down in the Oval Office for the first March before we see a detailed fiscal of the Science Committee for many time. Most cabinet-level officials plan from the Bush Administration. years. have been named, but the process of Congress, too, has undergone In his first speech to the sub-cabinet appointments is further some significant changes, and the Washington science policy commu- behind. In particular, as of press time 107th Congress will look decidedly nity, Boehlert said, “I want to build no appointments had been made for different from its predecessor. This is Washington Continued on Page 20 CRA NW 1100 Seventeenth Street, Suite 507 DC 20036-4632 Washington, COMPUTING RESEARCH NEWS March 2001 Computing Research CRA Elects New Officers to Two-Year Terms Association Effective July 1, 2001, James D. National Strategic Real-Time Board Officers Foley (Georgia Institute of Initiative; Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Edward Lazowska Chair Technology) will become board chair Transactions on Parallel and Distributed University of Washington of the Computing Research Systems, and Co-Editor-in-Chief and Mary Lou Soffa Association. Janice Cuny (University Co-Founder, International Journal on Vice Chair of Oregon) assumes the duties of Vice Real-Time Systems. His research inter- University of Pittsburgh Chair. The treasurer will be John ests include real-time computing; Leah Jamieson Stankovic (University of Virginia), operating systems; distributed com- Secretary and Kathleen McKeown (Columbia puting; and real-time databases. Purdue University University) will become secretary. Professor Stankovic was awarded a James Foley Officers serve two-year terms (July 1, Ph.D. in computer science from Treasurer 2001 to June 30, 2003). Brown University. Georgia Institute of Technology James D. Foley is Associate Janice Cuny Kathleen R. McKeown, Professor Board Members Dean, College of Computing; Awards, and has served on several and Chair of the Department of Sandra Johnson Baylor Professor, College of Computing and Computer Science at Columbia IBM Santa Teresa Laboratory panels at CRA Academic Careers in School of Electrical and Computer Computer Science Workshops. Jan University, has been a CRA board Randal Bryant Engineering; and Chair of the member since 1999. She currently Carnegie Mellon University Cuny has also been a mentor in Georgia Research Alliance; all at the CRA-W’s Distributed Mentoring