Dr. Nathalie Riche envisions a future in which all of our data will be accessible, meaningful, compelling and artistic. And as a researcher in human computer interaction and information visualization at Microsoft Research, she’s working on technical tools that will help us wrangle our data, extract knowledge from it, and communicate with it in a memorable, persuasive and aesthetically pleasing way. In other words, she wants our data to be both smart… and beautiful!
Today, Dr. Riche shares her passion for the art of data driven storytelling, reveals the two superpowers of data visualization, gives us an inside look at some innovative projects designed to help us th(ink) with digital ink, and tells the story of how a young woman with an artist’s heart headed into computer science, took a detour to the beach, paid for it with research and ended up with a rewarding career that brings both art and computing together.
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084 - Beautiful data with Dr. Nathalie Riche

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In the Microsoft Research Podcast series What’s Your Story, Johannes Gehrke explores the who behind the technical and scientific advancements helping to reshape the world. A systems expert whose 10 years with Microsoft spans research and product, Gehrke talks to members of the company’s research community about what motivates their work and how they got where they are today.In this episode, Gehrke is joined by Jacki O’Neill (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/jaoneil/), director of Microsoft Research Africa, Nairobi (formerly the Microsoft Africa Research Institute, or MARI) in Kenya. O’Neill pitched the idea for the lab after seeing an opportunity to expand the Microsoft research portfolio. She shares how a desire to build tech that can have global societal impact and a familial connection to the continent factored into the decision; how a belief that life is meant to be exciting has allowed her to take big personal and professional swings; and how her team in Nairobi is applying their respective expertise in human-computer interaction, machine learning, and data science to pursue globally equitable AI.To learn more about the global impact of AI, efforts to make AI more equitable, and related topics, register for Microsoft Research Forum (https://researchforum.microsoft.com/), a series of panel discussions and lightning talks around science and technology research in the era of general AI.Learn more:* Jacki O'Neill at Microsoft Research (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/jaoneil/?msockid=23b9b9353d686c6e3047ad083c866df5)* Microsoft Research Africa (formerly MARI) (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/group/microsoft-africa-research-institute-mari/)

What’s Your Story: Jacki O’Neill

Members of the research community at Microsoft work continuously to advance their respective fields. Abstracts brings its audience to the cutting edge with them through short, compelling conversations about new and noteworthy achievements.In this episode, Senior Principal Researcher Michel Galley (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/mgalley/) joins host Gretchen Huizinga to discuss “MathVista: Evaluating Mathematical Reasoning of Foundation Models in Visual Contexts (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/mathvista-evaluating-mathematical-reasoning-of-foundation-models-in-visual-contexts/),” which was accepted at the 2024 International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR). MathVista, an open-source benchmark, combines new and existing data to measure how good models are at solving a variety of math problems that involve processing images as well as text, helping to gain insight into their reasoning capabilities.Read the paperGet the code & dataset

Abstracts: May 6, 2024

Behind every emerging technology is a great idea propelling it forward. In the new Microsoft Research Podcast series, Ideas, members of the research community at Microsoft discuss the beliefs that animate their research, the experiences and thinkers that inform it, and the positive human impact it targets. In this episode, host Gretchen Huizinga talks with Rafah Hosn, partner group product manager for AI Frontiers at Microsoft Research. Hosn’s professional experience spans the gamut—from research to product to engineering to research again, the discipline’s uniquely high levels of creativity, curiosity, and intellect drawing her back in. Energized by past technical disruptions she’s experienced, Hosn is on what she describes as her “most exciting adventure” yet, helping to drive scientific advancement in AI and to answer a big question: how far can we push machine intelligence while still delivering technologies people can derive value from? Learn more:* AI Frontiers - Microsoft Research (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/lab/ai-frontiers/)* Responsible AI Principles and Approach | Microsoft AI (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/principles-and-approach/)

Ideas: Exploring AI frontiers with Rafah Hosn

Members of the research community at Microsoft work continuously to advance their respective fields. Abstracts brings its audience to the cutting edge with them through short, compelling conversations about new and noteworthy achievements.In this episode, Senior Research Software Engineer Tusher Chakraborty joins host Gretchen Huizinga to discuss “Spectrumize: Spectrum-efficient Satellite Networks for the Internet of Things,” which was accepted at the 2024 USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI). In the paper, Chakraborty and his coauthors share their efforts to address the challenges of delivering reliable and affordable IoT connectivity via satellite-based networks. They propose a method for leveraging the motion of small satellites to facilitate efficient communication between a large IoT-satellite constellation and devices on Earth within a limited spectrum.Read the paper

Abstracts: April 16, 2024

Behind every emerging technology is a great idea propelling it forward. In the new Microsoft Research Podcast series, Ideas, members of the research community at Microsoft discuss the beliefs that animate their research, the experiences and thinkers that inform it, and the positive human impact it targets. In this episode, host Gretchen Huizinga talks with Principal Researcher Kalika Bali. Inspired by an early vision of “talking computers” and a subsequent career in linguistics, Bali has spent the last two decades bringing the two together. Aided by recent advances in large language models and motivated by her belief that everyone should have access to AI in their own language, Bali and her teams are building language technology applications that they hope will bring the benefits of generative AI to under-resourced and underserved language communities around the world.Learn more:* The State and Fate of Linguistic Diversity and Inclusion in the NLP World (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/the-state-and-fate-of-linguistic-diversity-and-inclusion-in-the-nlp-world/) | Publication, July 2020* Project VeLLM (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-vellm/) | Project page* Kahani: Visual Storytelling (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/kahani/) | Project page* Kahani: Visual Storytelling through Culturally Nuanced Images (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/quarterly-brief/jan-2024-brief/articles/kahani-visual-storytelling-through-culturally-nuanced-images/) | Microsoft Research Forum | Episode 1, January 2024* Teachers in India help Microsoft Research design AI tool for creating great classroom content (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/teachers-in-india-help-microsoft-research-design-ai-tool-for-creating-great-classroom-content/) | Microsoft Research blog, October 2023* Digital Labor: Project Karya (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-karya/) | Project page* Village by village, creating the building blocks for AI tools with work that also educates (https://news.microsoft.com/source/asia/features/village-by-village-creating-the-building-blocks-for-ai-tools-with-work-that-also-educates/) | Microsoft Source Asia blog, February 2024

084 - Beautiful data with Dr. Nathalie Riche

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