Many of Microsoft products and services, such as motion tracker Kinect and search engine Bing, share common ground as they are embedded with technologies developed by the firm’s research labs worldwide, which the firm called “the research empire on which the sun never sets.”

In South Korea, Microsoft has also been pouring resources into supporting researchers in a variety of fields ranging from information technology to medical science for the past decade.

Celebrating the 10-year anniversary of the firm’s initiative in the research sector, Microsoft Korea unveiled some results of projects to nurture talents in Seoul on Tuesday.

Around 250 research projects have been conducted, for which MS provided support of $9 million, and around 150 Korean students went through internship programs at MS research labs in Beijing, China and Redmond, U.S.

The company has also joined hands with the Korean government and universities including Seoul National University and the Korea Institute of Science and Technology for the initiative.

“Collaboration between businesses and academia is usually based on contract, the joint research programs with MS, on the other hand, help individual researchers to grow as they allow them more independence in research and encourage cooperation with other experts in different fields,” said Hwang Seung-won, a computer science professor from POSTECH.

MS currently runs six research labs worldwide including those in Bangalore, India, and Cambridge, U.K.

Emphasizing openness and democratic research environment of the initiative, Lee Mi-ran, principal research program manager of Microsoft Research, said the research support programs run by the software giant are “unmatchable.”

“The programs provide a chance for researchers to focus on their research, allowing them to utilize Microsoft’s technologies and resources with no strings attached,” the manager said.

Through the firm’s Asia labs, more than 4,000 papers have been published in top-tier journals and at global conferences over the past 15 years, and more than 50 papers won the best dissertation awards. Hundreds of research results have led to the development of MS products.

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)