At the Latin American Faculty Summit 2010 in Brazil, Microsoft Research and FAPESP will showcase their investments in scientific research, totaling approximately R$ 3.5 million

Today, Microsoft Research and Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (Fapesp) kicked-off the sixth annual Latin American Faculty Summit 2010 in Brazil, where they welcomed more than 200 academic, government and industry leaders from across the globe to share their approaches and build new opportunities for creative innovation through scientific research and development in the region. Microsoft Research and FAPESP have jointly invested R$ 3.5 million in 11 Brazilian research studies over the past three years.

"We are proud that Microsoft Research is empowering the academic and scientific communities within Brazil and Latin America with the platforms and tools needed to support the data-intensive research they are engaged in," said Jaime Puente, director of Microsoft Research at Microsoft Corp. "Through these collaborations, we are able to leverage our technology expertise and provide powerful systems that help scientists better gather, organize, visualize and analyze data, which are key components of the scientific discovery process."

Computing: Making the Difference

Advanced computing can be a catalyst for scientific discovery, the advancement of human potential and the wellbeing of our planet. Such is the case with the Brazilian Rain Forest Sensor Network project, where academic researchers from the University of Sao Paulo, Johns Hopkins University, and Microsoft Research collaborated to develop, build, test, and deploy a wireless sensor network to collect environmental data in the Atlantic Rain Forest of Brazil. This data will help researchers better understand how the rainforest connects with the lower boundary of earth's atmosphere, with important implications for our understanding of climate change. Researchers plan to take the technical and scientific lessons learned in this pilot study and scale them to significantly larger environmental projects, including a sensor network study in the Amazon.

"The collaboration between Microsoft Research and FAPESP helps to meet social and economic challenges by supporting a research network of scientists to create new advanced knowledge related to computer science and its applications to healthcare, agriculture and the environment", says Carlos Henrique de Brito Cruz, Fapesp Scientific Director. "Besides finding solutions to promote human well-being, projects have the potential for great impact in strategic areas such as education and economic development," adds Brito Cruz.

Applying Spam Filtering Thinking to HIV Research

HIV and AIDS kills over two million people worldwide every year, of which approximately eighty thousand are from Latin America. At this year's Faculty Summit, David Heckerman, senior director, eScience Research Group within Microsoft Research, will present the latest developments in the work of his team and worldwide collaborators to fight HIV, which follows much the same strategy as that used to combat spam. This work provides initial steps in what could be an effective vaccine for HIV.

During the three-day gathering, Microsoft Research and FAPESP executives will join with scientific researchers worldwide to present important discoveries in healthcare, earth, energy and environment, sustainability, astronomy, and other areas.

Microsoft Research has invested approximately R$ 14 million since 2003 in increasing the capacity, visibility and quality of Latin American academic research through initiatives such as two virtual institutes, research grants, research summits and internships/PhD fellowships. The Microsoft Research investment in Latin America contributes to the advancement of computing ideas and the development of solutions for the economic and social problems affecting the region.

In Brazil, Microsoft Research and FAPESP invested approximately R$ 1 million on four studies in 2009, bringing the total joint investment in research to R$ 3.5 million in the past three years. For Microsoft Research, the importance of this support is to promote advances in computing to create innovation in critical areas for society and to encourage new approaches to solve problems that affect human health and the environment.

Key research projects being showcased at the 2010 Latin American Faculty Summit include:

• Social Media in Enterprises
• Collaborating in Disaster Relief Efforts
• E-Farms, a two-way road for small farms to the networked world
• Results from an Atlantic Rainforest Micrometeorology Sensor Network Pilot Study
• Bionergy Research: Integrating Agronomic Traits, Gene Networks and Carbon Partition for the Development of an Energy Cane
• Examples of Mobile Point of Care Diagnostics and New Modalities of Mobile UI
• Automatic Screening of Diabetic Retinopathies: IT in the fight against preventable blindness

Microsoft Research and FAPESP are committed to providing academic and scientific communities with the tools needed to support the data-intensive research needs of today by offering them technology expertise and powerful systems to help accelerate scientific discovery and advance human potential and the wellbeing of our planet.