Microsoft Research Cambridge
News & features
Awards | Optica
Francesca Parmigiani elected as a 2026 Optica Fellow
Fellows are Optica members who have served with distinction in the advancement of optics and photonics. Francesca was elected for her pioneering contributions to the field of high-speed optical communications and optical signal processing.
In the news | European Disability Forum
European Accessibility summit: Accessibility meets Artificial Intelligence
The future of technology and disability The afternoon started with a presentation by Dr Cecily Morrison, Senior Principal Researcher Manager, Microsoft Research Cambridge. Dr Morrison leads a diverse team to ensure technological solutions are inclusive. She explained some examples of practical…
In the news | Jenny Lay-Flurrie | LinkedIn
Disability Representation in AI Imagery
Over the last year, we have been collaborating to better understand how disability is portrayed in AI, specifically – images. When disability representation is misaligned or missing, it can inadvertently reinforce stigma, escalating harms by erasing lived experiences or disrespecting disabled…
In the news | Forward Future
Future Forward Live – AOC, Part 2
What does an analog optical computer do? Francesca Parmigiani, Principal Research Manager at Microsoft Research Cambridge (@Microsoft), has the answer. “When you start learning a new programming language, you begin with a ‘Hello World.’ For us, that meant recognizing handwritten…
In the news | Forward Future
Future Forward Live – AOC, Part 1
Francesca Parmigiani, Principal Research Manager at Microsoft Research Cambridge (@MSFTResearch), on the moment her team realized they were onto something big. “We ran a small version of these banking problems on the actual hardware and saw great accuracy. That was…
In the news | IBM Think
Computing with light offers two paths forward for AI
Light is edging into roles once reserved for electricity in computing. As researchers race to ease the growing energy and performance strain that AI puts on data centers, some are experimenting with using photons instead of electrons to process information, an…
In the news | Microsoft Source
Microsoft’s analog optical computer cracks two practical problems and shows AI promise
A small Microsoft Research team had lofty goals when it set out four years ago to create an analog optical computer that would use light as a medium for solving complex problems. From the beginning, they wanted to build it using…
In the news | Microsoft Build 2025
Inside Azure innovations with Mark Russinovich
Join Mark Russinovich, CTO, Deputy CISO, Technical Fellow of Microsoft Azure. Mark will take you on a tour of the latest innovations in Azure architecture and explain how Azure enables intelligent, modern, and innovative applications at scale in the cloud,…
Research Focus: Week of May 7, 2025
In this issue: New research on compound AI systems and causal verification of the Confidential Consortium Framework; release of Phi-4-reasoning; enriching tabular data with semantic structure, and more.