Microsoft and Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; Russian MGU), Russia’s most renowned institution of higher learning, shook hands earlier this month on a joint $1 million research project, the US company announced.
The three-year agreement calls for close collaboration between the investor, Microsoft Research, and two of MSU’s leading labs – one that develops computer vision technologies and another with long experience in the processing and visualization of big data.
The latter, in the university’s Department of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics (CMC), has been developing a range of innovative services over recent years, including ChronoZoom (chronological data visualization), FetchClimate (a bank of climate data since 1900) and Distribution Modeller (behavioral patterns modeling for complex ecosystems).
“By investing in MSU scientific projects, Microsoft Research will be able to push its parent company’s R&D activity in Russia,” said Dmitry Khalin, director for technology policy at Microsoft Russia.
Microsoft and MSU have been partners since the early 1990s. CMC is now one of the US Internet giant’s established university innovation centers, and as many as 10,000 MSU undergraduates and graduate students have participated in bilateral joint projects.
Another US giant collaborating with MSU is Intel, one of whose current projects involves students from CMC joining Intel experts in designing new training courses on the research challenges at the intersection of the natural and social sciences.
