Microsoft Research today launched its operations in India, and signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the ministry of science and technology and ocean development to partner in research projects.The Bangalore lab, the third Microsoft Research facility outside the United States, will conduct long-term basic and applied research.Microsoft Research India (MSRI) would initially start investigating areas of geographic information systems (GIS), technologies for emerging markets, multilingual systems and sensor networks, managing director P Anandan said today.According to an official statement, "MSRI's mission is to conduct long-term basic and applied research and collaborate with Indian research institutions and universities as part of Microsoft's ongoing commitment to engaging with academic and scientific communities worldwide to accelerate scientific progress and innovation in computer science and software engineering."MSRI plans to employ about two dozen scientists, interns and support staff in the first year, the statement added.The operations were launched by union minister of state for science and technology and ocean development Kapil Sibal, who also signed the MoU between MSRI and the ministry.The first collaborative project would be a GIS project that would bring together a variety of satellite imagery, remote sensing and other geographic data in a geographically indexed database, the statement said.
