LLMs that get lost in conversation. Robots that learn zero-shot. Diffusion models built for imbalanced data. This is the ICLR edition of Research Focus. msft.it/6017vB2nT

A new perspective from Microsoft Research published in Cell makes the case that generative models are what oncology needs next, capable of integrating genomics, imaging, clinical data, and more into a unified system for cancer discovery. msft.it/6013QhkUS

We are thrilled to share Microsoft has been awarded the 2026 Franz Edelman Award by INFORMS for using ML, optimization, and generative AI to orchestrate cloud fulfillment decisions at global scale. msft.it/6017QC6kP

Graphic featuring a portrait of Jacki O’Neill against a purple gradient background, with text reading she is a recipient of the ACM SIGCHI Societal Impact Award.

Congratulations to Dr. Jacki O’Neill on receiving the 2026 ACM SIGCHI Societal Impact Award! As founding director of Microsoft Research Africa, Kenya, she advances human-centered, equitable AI designed to serve communities across Africa and beyond. msft.it/6013Q7u0x

Microsoft Research is at #CHI2026 (@chi.acm.org) this week. The question driving our work this year isn't about AI technical capabilities. It's whether it works well for everyone. msft.it/6015Q7PtJ

Newly published in Optica from Microsoft Research: a first-of-its-kind materials-screening framework for glass-based data storage, identifying which intrinsic material properties actually drive performance in femtosecond laser writing. msft.it/6014QfbFo

On the Microsoft Research Podcast, Chief Scientist Jaime Teevan & researchers Jenna Butler, Jake Hofman, & Rebecca Janssen unpack the New Future of Work Report 2025 & explore what an ideal AI-driven working world looks like (it’s not just doing more). msft.it/6016Q4U92

Today, we welcome the 2026 Microsoft Research Fellowship cohort, an inspiring global community of fellows and advisors helping to shape what’s next across science, technology, and society. Join us in celebrating this year’s recipients: msft.it/6013Q45bX

For people who speak the world’s most popular languages, AI is helping improve their health care, education and more. But what about the millions who speak less common languages? Microsoft researchers and data scientists are working to close the gap. msft.it/6012QNPVw

In the latest Research Focus: LLM sentiment in cultural context, robot assembly learning, smarter AI agents, verified Rust code, and CHI 2026. msft.it/6016Q2k8K

ADeLe profiles AI models across a set of core abilities and compares them to task requirements. Published in Nature, this framework enables accurate prediction of model performance on tasks they have not encountered before: msft.it/6015QLEuN

Deploying AI across cultures is more than translation. Atlas is an interactive playbook that can help with cross-cultural deployment of AI applications. msft.it/6015QINXc

Multilingual AI means making hard tradeoffs. Translate or fine-tune? One model or many? Vibhasha is an interactive playbook to help you build multicultural apps and make those decisions with confidence. msft.it/6016QI3gu

Not every language has the AI infrastructure others do. Paza is an interactive playbook to help you build robust speech models for low-resource languages with benchmarking tools to help you choose the right approach. microsoft.github.io/Paza/

AI should work for everyone, wherever they are, and whatever language they speak. Introducing three interactive playbooks by Microsoft Research. These guides are for organizations building AI across languages, cultures, and markets. Meet Paza, Vibhasha, and Atlas. msft.it/6014QxJnm

AsgardBench evaluates whether embodied agents can revise their plans based on visual observations as tasks unfold. By focusing on perception-driven planning, it exposes key limitations and guides improvements in agent reliability. msft.it/6015QQ4fZ

GroundedPlanBench evaluates whether VLMs can plan actions and determine where they should occur. V2GP can improve both planning and spatial grounding, leading to more reliable robot behavior. Learn more: msft.it/6016QQQTg

Are machines truly intelligent? In Episode 1 of “The Shape of Things to Come,” technologists Subutai Ahmad & Nicolò Fusi join Microsoft’s Doug Burger to compare how large language models work with how the human brain learns & what it means for AI’s future. msft.it/6015QsiOZ

MicroLED datacenter networking, LLM-driven GPU design, real-time multimodal AI, agent memory and learning from experience, plus new benchmarks for interactive planning and a new podcast about the future of machine intelligence. msft.it/6016Qs9io

With advances happening fast, what will the future look like? Microsoft Research Labs lead Doug Burger explores this question via the lens of machine intelligence, climate & more in the podcast “The Shape of Things to Come.” Full episodes coming soon. msft.it/6013QW7P5

Three white line icons, showing network, workflow, and bug‑analysis icons, on a blue‑to‑purple gradient background.

As AI agents transition from simple chatbots to complex autonomous systems, finding and fixing their errors gets harder. AgentRx is an automated diagnostic framework that pinpoints critical failures and supports more transparent, resilient agentic systems: msft.it/6012QlyiM

With advances happening fast, what will the future look like? Microsoft research lead Doug Burger explores this question via the lens of machine intelligence, climate & more in the podcast series “The Shape of Things to Come.” Full episodes coming soon. msft.it/6018Qcv5i

You’re no longer just doing the work—you’re directing. In our latest episode, @sineadbovell.bsky.social explores how the future of work is taking shape, and what it means as AI systems start to feel less like tools and more like teammates.

Watch all episodes of On Second Thought: msft.it/6015QcqMd

PlugMem transforms AI agents’ interaction histories into structured, reusable knowledge. It integrates with any agent, supports diverse tasks and memory types, and maximizes decision quality while significantly reducing memory token use: msft.it/6017Qc9vv

Multimodal reasoning with Phi-4-reasoning-vision, new work on scaling LLM inference, benchmarking AI agents in network operations, cinematic video generation, adaptive evaluation for LLMs, and using AI to improve individual and population health. www.linkedin.com/pulse/phi-4-...

The latest Microsoft Research Forum episode is now available on-demand. Explore new ARO, Dion2, Magentic Marketplace, OptiMind, Agent Lightning, and Healthbots. Register to watch: events.microsoft.com/flow/ms/rese...

White line icons against a blue-green gradient background form an architecture flow chart. In the middle of the chart is a three-by-three matrix of circles and lines within a round-edge square. Above the matrix, three icons in a row – an equation, a person using a desktop, and a head with gears flow by dotted lines to the matrix. To the left of the matrix is an icon representing a stack of files with an arrow pointing to the matrix. To the right of the matrix is a graph with a double headed arrow pointing to the matrix and to itself. Below the matrix is an icon representing a document. A dotted line arrow connects this graph to the matrix, showing the direction flowing from the matrix to the document. To the right of the document icon is an hourglass icon and three list icons with a dotted line connecting the hourglass to the lists.

Vision-language models improve multimodal systems, but can make them slower, costlier, and harder to deploy. Learn how Phi-4-reasoning-vision-15B, a compact and fast multimodal reasoning model, blends strengths of different methods while reducing their limits: msft.it/6014Q5X0u

CORPGEN enables AI agents to manage dozens of interdependent tasks simultaneously in simulated workplace environments. It maintains performance under heavy multitasking, delivering up to 3.5x higher completion rates than leading baselines. msft.it/6015QbHoH

Long-term glass data storage advances, new work on transferable reasoning, multi-turn AI safety testing, multilingual AI design, and evaluating how models actually think. msft.it/6015QksvJ

Three white outline icons on a blue-to-pink gradient background: an image with a copyright badge, an image overlaid with fingerprint-like lines, and an image framed by a cropping grid.

As synthetic media grows, verifying what’s real, and the origin of content, matters more than ever. Our latest report explores media integrity and authentication methods, their limits, and practical paths toward trustworthy provenance across images, audio, and video. msft.it/6012QnGgi