Computer models. Coming soon to a lab near you: drag-and-drop virtual worlds.

C R E D IT : C O U R T E S Y O F M IC R O S O F T R E S E A R C H CAMBRIDGE, UNITED KINGDOM—Techies love to hate Microsoft. They curse the “blue screen of death” that appears when a computer running the company’s fl agship Windows operating system crashes. They deride what they say are Windows’s bloated code and security flaws. And they complain that the software giant is perpetually behind the curve on new technologies such as smart phones and tablet computers. In short, techies—many scientists included—are a tough audience. So in 2003, Stephen Emmott could have been forgiven if he had walked the other way when Microsoft executives asked him to come aboard and help the company fi gure out what it should be doing in science. Emmott, then a neuroscientist at University College London who had worked previous stints at Bell Laboratories and NCR, accepted the challenge, provided he could build a cutting-edge computational sciences laboratory within Microsoft’s research division to tackle knotty scientifi c challenges. If successful, the software the group created would help other scientists make broad impacts on their fi elds as well. It’s too early to say whether this strategy will make money for Microsoft in the long run. Indeed, for now, Emmott says that he and his colleagues plan to share their wares freely with the academic scientifi c community. But Emmott’s vision is now in full gear. He spent his fi rst year selling his ideas within the company and began hiring staff members. Now Microsoft Research’s computational science lab has 40 Ph.D.s and students and continues to grow. A couple of the researchers are software engineers—obviously Microsoft’s stock in trade—but most come from disciplines as varied as ecology, neuroscience, mathematics, and developmental biology. Their hope, say Emmott and others, is to transform the way scientists study complex, ever-changing systems, such as the global carbon cycle and information processing inside cells. To do so, they’re working to develop a suite of new software tools including novel programming languages that better represent biological systems and computer models that work across multiple scales, simulating carbon budgets at the levels of leaves, trees, and forests, for example. They’re also striving to make those tools simple to use, thereby extending the types of studies that can be done by researchers who aren’t full-time programmers. “I’m interested in tools that change the way science is done,” Emmott says. Prototype versions of several of these tools are now up and running and being put through their paces by researchers at Microsoft. One program, currently called Microsoft Computational Science Studio, contains components that are able to handle disparate types of data, quickly plug them into a model, and visualize the interactions. Other packages help biologists design and simulate DNA circuits for biological computers and manage wireless sensor networks for tracking animal behavior. Carol Barford, an ecologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, says she has used other software packages produced by academics to build and visualize complex models. She recently began working with Microsoft’s software to investigate how future climate-change scenarios might affect agricultural production around the globe. “It’s the slickest one I’ve ever seen,” she says.