We began our eighth Microsoft Research PhD Summer School with a traditional afternoon tea served at Selwyn College—one of the 31 University of Cambridge Colleges—which also accommodated students for the week. PhD students from across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa joined us for a week filled with learning, networking, and mentorship in our new lab building, which opened just a few months ago.
“The School was an exciting showcase of research by Microsoft staff and the students themselves, and provided training in key research skills,” says Andy Gordon, co-manager of our Programming Principles and Tools group and part-time professor at University of Edinburgh. “We were especially delighted to welcome the first cohort of PhD students in the Joint Initiative between the University of Edinburgh and Microsoft Research.”
This year’s diverse student body included 20 Microsoft Research PhD Scholars, as well as students from Max Planck Institutes in Germany, the Cambridge Computer Lab, and students associated with Microsoft Research’s collaborative research institutes: BSC-Microsoft Research Centre, Microsoft Research-Inria Joint Centre, and Microsoft’s Advanced Technology Labs in Egypt, Germany, and Israel.
The technical agenda included a stimulating mix of talks and hands-on demos and poster sessions. Our research talks covered the wide spectrum of work we are conducting across the lab, including environmental science (“Modelling All Life on Earth. Yes, Really!”), computational biology (“Software for Programming Cells”), and cloud computing (“Cloud Computing—Big Data and Beyond”).
As in previous years, we complemented our research talks with a range of personal development talks. These included the all-time favorites, “How to Write a Great Research Paper” and “How to Give a Great Research Talk” by Simon Peyton Jones and “A Rough Guide to Being an Entrepreneur” by Raspberry Pi co-founder Jack Lang, as well as talks on “Strategic Thinking for Researchers” and “Intellectual Property at Microsoft”.
Read the full story on the Microsoft Research Connections Blog
Image: Sixty students from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa participated in the 2013 PhD Summer School at Microsoft Research Cambridge.