{"id":2313,"date":"2011-10-12T09:30:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-12T09:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/msr_er\/2011\/10\/12\/sound-the-bagpipes-joint-initiative-in-informatics-announced\/"},"modified":"2016-07-20T07:33:32","modified_gmt":"2016-07-20T14:33:32","slug":"sound-the-bagpipes-joint-initiative-in-informatics-announced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cm-edgetun.pages.dev\/en-us\/research\/blog\/sound-the-bagpipes-joint-initiative-in-informatics-announced\/","title":{"rendered":"Sound the Bagpipes: Joint Initiative in Informatics Announced"},"content":{"rendered":"

On October 5, 2011, on the stately campus of the University of Edinburgh, Sir Tim O’Shea (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, principal of the University of Edinburgh, and Rick Rashid<\/a>, chief research officer of Microsoft Research, officially inaugurated a significant joint initiative in informatics. It was standing room only in a crowded lecture hall as Rick delivered a Distinguished Lecture on the topic, “It’s a Data Driven World—Get Over It.”<\/span><\/p>\n

\"From<\/span><\/p>\n

Rick Rashid and Andy Gordon with the supervisors of the first group of PhD students in the joint initiative. From left to right: Stratis Viglas, Charles Sutton, Guido Sanguinetti, Rick Rashid, Amos Storkey, Jane Hillston, Andy Gordon<\/span><\/p>\n

The new initiative brings together researchers from two of Europe’s leading centers in informatics: the University of Edinburgh’s School of Informatics (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> (the UK’s largest and foremost (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> university research center in informatics), and Microsoft Research Cambridge (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>. It builds on the deep intellectual ties between the two institutions—ties that include research into programming languages and semantics, bioinformatics, machine learning, computer vision, natural-language processing, and security. Microsoft Research Cambridge’s Managing Director Andrew Blake (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, Distinguished Scientist Christopher Bishop (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, and Principal Researcher Andy Gordon (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> all hold part-time professorships. University of Edinburgh faculty members—including Paul Anderson, David Aspinall, Gordon Plotkin, David Robertson, Sethu Vijayakumar, and Bonnie Webber—have received funding for PhD scholarships and senior fellowships from Microsoft Research in the past.<\/span><\/p>\n

To celebrate and consolidate these relationships, we are delighted to announce that Microsoft Research Connections is co-sponsoring four studentships (PhD scholarships) to be awarded to students at the University of Edinburgh. As Rick Rashid said at the launch, “PhD students are the glue that binds together collaborations between Microsoft Research and the university.” The studentships, which are offered through the Microsoft Research Connections PhD Scholarship Programme (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, receive half of their funding from Microsoft, and half from matching funds obtained by the university. As with all studentships provided by the PhD Scholarship Programme, the recipients will receive a three-year bursary and invitations to the Microsoft Research annual PhD Summer School in Cambridge, where they learn about Microsoft Research Cambridge research projects, acquire key transferable skills, and share ideas with Microsoft researchers. All students are supervised by a university faculty member and co-supervised by a Microsoft researcher. In addition, some of the University of Edinburgh studentship recipients may also be offered an internship at Microsoft Research.<\/span><\/p>\n

Applications for the first round of scholarships closed in September 2011. University of Edinburgh faculty members submitted proposals for twelve research projects for the studentships and the following four projects were selected:<\/span><\/p>\n