Microsoft Research

Aurora 1.5 adds 22 more variables, hourly temporal resolution, and probabilistic ensemble forecasting to the Aurora foundation model, making it more useful for real-world weather, climate, and energy applications. msft.it/6017vInGR

Short chart specifications are easy to write, but often produce uninspiring results. Flint is an open-source visualization language that offers a middle path, letting AI agents create expressive charts from compact, human-editable specifications. msft.it/6011vxmcl

Among Microsoft’s 100+ accepted papers, 3 oral presentations, and 1 expo demo at ICML in Seoul, highlights include Fara 1.5 computer-use agents, critique-resilient benchmarking, expanded protein ML benchmarks with FLIP2, and improved LLM reasoning stability. msft.it/6019vaCHU

AI agents often fail because their instructions, or skills, are manually modified with no guarantee of improvement. Learn how SkillOpt turns skill editing into a training process, making agent behavior more reliable without changing model weights: msft.it/6012vsvEs

AI agents can't remember past conversations. They must constantly reload or retrieve context, which grows less efficient as tasks get longer and more complex. Memora solves this with a scalable memory system separating what’s stored from how it's retrieved: msft.it/6018vs3gC

What do people actually do with AI at work? A new analysis of five million M365 Copilot conversations has answers. Scott Counts breaks it down in a new video. And dive into the analysis here: msft.it/6011vqpbL

Researchers introduce generative causal testing, which translates black box models into clear hypotheses and verifies them in the scanner, revealing what specific brain regions respond to in language. msft.it/6011vUtRd

Talos was built to help resolve a major bottleneck in genomic medicine: human review time. The open-source system recovered 90% of in-scope diagnoses while surfacing just 1.3 candidate variants per patient for expert review. msft.it/6014vUBwK

On the Microsoft Research Podcast, Microsoft’s Jaime Teevan, Jenna Butler, Jake Hofman, and Rebecca Janssen explore how looking at AI as more than a tool for automating tasks people are already capable of might open the door to new possibilities. msft.it/6011vo8cX

Coding agents understand code, but don't remember it. We released ShadowFrog, a set of open-source skills that build a persistent shadow knowledge base, so agent understanding compounds across sessions. 📝 microsoft.github.io/debug-gym/blog… 💻 github.com/microsoft/Shad… 🧵 ↓ (1/10)

Can you remember a new password after listening to five hours of stories? A transformer can. AI researchers Subutai Ahmad and Nicolò Fusi explore the fundamental differences between human memory and machine intelligence with Microsoft CVP Doug Burger. msft.it/6016vllRa

ResNet has received the Longuet-Higgins Prize at CVPR 2026, recognizing research with proven, lasting impact. A decade after its publication, residual connections remain foundational to how modern AI systems are built, with over 320,000 citations and growing. msft.it/6017vl6bl

30x faster analytics, GPU kernels generated automatically from SQL, AI matched to lab-grown tumor models for cancer treatment, and LLMs that learn across tasks without retraining. Dive into the latest issue of Research Focus: msft.it/6010vcYZ4

Project Ire examined a timely malware sample and determined its intent through reverse engineering—identifying LOTUSLITE characteristics even as most major EDR tools did not detect it. msft.it/6011viy4N

A new research effort called Encrypted Spaces explores an architecture for collaborative applications where data is encrypted, and operations are cryptographically verifiable. Learn more: msft.it/6017v9lNt

New research in Nature Methods from Project Ex Vivo shows AI models learn more from diverse cell states than from scaled datasets alone, a finding that could reshape how therapies are matched to patients. msft.it/6013vgE8l

A BTS look a first timer's experience at the MSR lab at Microsoft Build 2026—featuring the demos, the builders, and the conversations that made it worth the trip.

During the Inside Azure Innovations breakout at Build 2026, Microsoft Azure CTO, deputy CISO and technical fellow Mark Russinovich introduced Project Mosaic, an experimental optical interconnect technology from Microsoft Research Cambridge using micro-LEDs for low-power, high-speed data transmission. A live demo led by senior researcher Kaoutar Benyahya displays individual LED modulation forming letters, proving the concept’s real-time responsiveness. Check out Mark and Kaoutar starting @ 38:38: msft.it/6015vdhS9

That’s a wrap on Microsoft Build 2026. Huge thank you to the researchers and team who brought it to life on the floor this week. If you missed what we shared, check it out here: msft.it/6015vjfld

What do the people who build the foundations for others to build on like to build themselves? The answers may surprise you, everything from sandwiches to the future. #MSBuild