Microsoft Research AI Society Fellows 2024

Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Microsoft’s best-known software products are the Windows line of operating systems, the Microsoft 365 suite of productivity applications, and the Edge web browser. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface lineup of touchscreen personal computers. Microsoft ranked No. 14 in the 2022 Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue; it was the world’s largest software maker by revenue as of 2022. It is considered one of the Big Five American information technology companies, alongside Alphabet (parent company of Google), Amazon, Apple, and Meta.

Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975, to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by Windows. The company’s 1986 initial public offering (IPO) and subsequent rise in its share price created three billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires among Microsoft employees. Since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market and has made several corporate acquisitions. As of 2022, Microsoft has the fourth-highest global brand valuation.

The Microsoft Research AI & Society fellows program aims to catalyze research collaboration between Microsoft Research and eminent scholars and experts across a range of disciplines core to discussions at the intersection of AI and its impact on society.

Microsoft recognizes the value of bridging academic, industry, policy, and regulatory worlds and seeks to ignite interdisciplinary collaboration that drives real-world impact.

Through a global, open call for proposals targeting a specific set of research challenges, Microsoft will facilitate strategic collaborations, catalyze new research ideas, and contribute publicly available works to benefit scholarly discourse and benefit society more broadly.

The program offers opportunities for fellows from fields beyond core computer sciences to join and support interdisciplinary research conversations with Microsoft Researchers. By facilitating these new collaborations, Microsoft aims to scale the impact of collective research efforts at the intersection of AI & Society.