This week sees the launch of the Microsoft Institute for High Performance Computing at the University of Southampton. Led by Professor Simon Cox and Dr Kenji Takeda in the School of Engineering Sciences, the Institute will push state-of-the-art technologies to tackle real-world scientific and engineering problems. World-class researchers in the School of Engineering Sciences work closely with industrial partners that span the aerospace, automotive, bioengineering, marine and telecommunications sectors. Professor Cox explains: "Our aim is to demonstrate why, where, and how we are exploiting current and future Microsoft tools and technologies to make the engineering design process faster, cheaper and better." Dennis Crain of Microsoft added: "It's an exciting opportunity to have a top engineering school such as Southampton use Microsoft software to solve tough engineering research problems. In this way Southampton will help refine future versions of our new high performance computing product, Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003." Staff from the Southampton Institute for High Performance Computing will be demonstrating their Tablet PC-based photonic crystal design system on the Microsoft stand at Supercomputing 2005 in Seattle. Bill Gates, Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect, delivered the conference keynote speech.