Kapil Dev Singh

SEATTLE: The fifth TechFest conference displayed Microsoft's research initiatives aimed at evolving future of computing. The two-day conference, organized at Microsoft campus at Seattle, was attended by select journalists, customers, internal product groups and government officials. The wide variety of projects displayed at the conference hovered around major themes of 'information management, security & innovation' in use of computing technology.

Close to 150 new development projects related to advancements in computing were displayed. Notable of them being Touch Light project, Venice project, Rural computing and Security enhancement through Control Flow Integrity.

The TouchLight project is a vision-based touch screen technology that enables novel interactions, which go beyond traditional touch screens. With a combination of a projector, sensors & cameras any surface can be converted into an interface. The project displayed at the conference showcased how a tabletop can be converted into an interface for computing. The development can go a long way in defining innovative use of computing in our day-to-day life.

Research under the Venice project is related to development of wireless mesh networks that provide neighborhood-wide & city-wide connectivity in rural and urban areas. 'The project was motivated by the information divide, which exists between those who have Internet access and those who do not," said Mr. Victor Bahl, a senior researcher working on this project. The development in this project include new multiple radio hardware platform, new 900 MHz 802.11 like RF transceiver, new dual frequency mesh and distributed DHCP and distributed DNS. 'The outcomes of the project will have profound effect in developing nations and they remain central to Microsoft's role in emerging markets', commented Craig Mundie, Chief Technical Officer, Advanced Strategies and Policy Microsoft. He sees a time horizon of 2-3 years when this should be available to the users.

The Rural Computing project further builds on the theme of emerging markets. This project is inspired by the fact that billions of people live in rural communities where TVs and telephones, to say nothing of PCs, are rare. However, there is a growing effort worldwide to bring computing technology and Internet connectivity to rural villages. The demonstration at the conference had a PC kiosk in rural India being imitated. The research effort towards this project is aimed at understanding the nuances of the social fabric, the relevance of computing and information and the usage dynamics in the rural areas.

The project related to enhancing code security with security control flow integrity aims at building security into Microsoft software products. Current software attacks often build on exploits that subvert machine code execution. The enforcement of a basic safety property, Control-Flow Integrity can prevent such attacks from arbitrarily controlling program behaviour.

TechFest is organized by Microsoft Research. Microsoft Research, founded in 1991, is dedicated to conducting both basic and applied research in computer science and software engineering. Researchers collaborate with leading academic, government, and industry researchers to advance the state of the art in such areas as graphics, speech recognition, user-interface research, natural language processing, programming tools and methodologies, operating systems and networking, and the mathematical sciences.

Microsoft Research works out of six locations worldwide, the latest being the Bangalore lab.