Speaking at TechFest before an audience of customers, academics, dignitaries and media representatives, Rick Rashid, senior vice president of Microsoft Research, said, “Computing impacts every facet of our lives, from the way we work to the way we learn and live. Our job in research is to continuously advance technology to make our lives better in tangible ways.”

With almost 40 exciting new technologies on display to the public at TechFest, and dozens more accessible only to Microsoft employees, Rashid highlighted numerous projects that show how computing enables new experiences, and how the basic tools of computer science are evolving to help all the sciences advance more rapidly.

Rashid was joined onstage by Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer at Microsoft, and Alan Alda, host of “Scientific American Frontiers.” Mundie said, “By investing in long-term research, we can transform software and computing technologies, helping to inspire innovations that will have a lasting and positive impact on the world’s most pressing issues, from education and healthcare to energy and the environment.”

Exploring the Universe: WorldWide Telescope

WorldWide Telescope is a rich visualization environment that functions as a virtual telescope, combining imagery from the most advanced ground- and space-based telescopes in the world to enable seamless, guided explorations of the universe.

“WorldWide Telescope is like having an observatory on your desktop,” said Rashid. “It enables you to see the sky in a completely new way.”

Rashid announced that WorldWide Telescope will run on the Visual Experience Engine, a Microsoft Research technology that enables seamless panning and zooming across the night sky, blending terabytes of images, data and narratives from multiple sources over the Internet into a rich, immersive experience. The Visual Experience Engine can also be applied to other scenarios, such as tours of parks, national monuments or vacation destinations.

Mundie and Alda observed that the WorldWide Telescope could lead to new discoveries and inspire a new generation of young people to consider focusing on math and science.

Evolving Search: User Interfaces for Collaboration and Persistence

Today, Web browsers and search engines are typically designed to support an individual person, working alone, at a single point in time. Microsoft Research showed three new user interfaces that support richer types of search experiences: