February 2025

We love an adventure that leads to discovery!

For explorers of yore, that meant rounding Cape Horn in a wooden ship or racing a dogsled to the North Pole. These days, we’re entering a new age of discovery, one that thankfully doesn’t require embarking on a dangerous journey.

Now we can make discoveries that could help to solve the world’s most pressing challenges, advance learning and even save lives – without anyone risking theirs. Technology is bringing the power of limitless discovery literally to our fingertips – no compass required!

Microsoft recently announced a transformative discovery in quantum computing. Majorana 1 is the world’s first quantum processing unit powered by topological qubits, based on an entirely new state of matter that Microsoft created. This new type of qubit is smaller, faster and more reliable, and could accelerate the development of everything from new medicines to revolutionary new materials.

This month, we’ll tell you how modern-day explorers are using AI and other technologies to:

• Expand the horizons of education
• Break boundaries
• Chart new paths for medical science
• Discover new materials

And we’ll share a few tips on using AI to work smarter and more efficiently at your job – giving you more time and brainpower to go out and do some world-conquering of your own.

So buckle up, friends. We’ve got some discovering to do. Eureka!

Each major advancement in civilization, from the Stone Age to the Industrial Revolution, has hinged on our ability to discover and use materials. Developing new materials is key to innovations in industries like energy and health care, but that typically involves a long process that can cost millions or billions of dollars, with no sure success. ?

A new model developed by Microsoft Research AI for Science is using generative AI to radically redefine materials discovery. MatterGen directly generates novel materials based on properties proposed by researchers instead of screening infinite possible materials. That could dramatically speed up the creation of materials in fields including energy storage, electronics and biomedical engineering.

Generative AI is also the foundation for Muse, a first-of-its-kind model that reimagines gameplay and deepens the possibilities for interactive and 3D environments. By understanding an environment and its dynamics, the model enables developers to create better immersive experiences – and advances generative AI in many applications beyond gaming, from home design to retail space configuration.

Another new research breakthrough, RAD-DINO, can help with radiology tasks. This AI tool is being used in a broader collaboration with Mayo Clinic and Microsoft Research to give doctors more comprehensive medical data faster – enabling better diagnoses and personalized care.

Of course, brilliant researchers typically start with a solid childhood education – the sort that the World Traveler School in Antwerp, Belgium, is dedicated to providing.

That’s never any small task, but the school’s 450 students, many from families who fled war or economic hardship, speak a total of 70 languages. And most don’t speak the dominant local language, Flemish Dutch, at home.

To help non-Dutch-speaking students catch up with their peers, teachers at the school rely on two AI-powered apps, Microsoft Reading Progress and Microsoft Immersive Reader. Reading Progress uses AI to analyze video of a student reading and gives feedback to help them improve, while Immersive Reader lets students read text in their own language and then in Dutch and get instant subtitles of a teacher’s instruction.

In India, AI is helping workers like Venkatesh Deshpande discover their potential. Deshpande, who was born blind, participated in a program aimed at training 10 million Indians in AI skills over the next five years.

Through the ADVANTA(I)GE INDIA initiative, a partnership between Microsoft, government ministries and NGOs, Deshpande learned to use AI tools that are making a big difference in his work and life. He now uses AI to help develop lesson plans for teachers in more than 140 schools and uses Microsoft’s Seeing AI app to identify what denomination money is.?

“I use AI tools to be more independent?today, as I don’t want to always be dependent on my friends and family members,” he said.?

Color us inspired!

Aimee Kelly has always loved bold, bright colors, but an AI-powered experience at the world’s leading art fair took her inspiration to a whole new level..

Kelly, an Afro-Latina content creator based in New York, used the Art Basel Lens app powered by Microsoft Copilot while checking out Art Basel Miami Beach. The app let Kelly scan artworks, learn about artists and share the experience with her 200,000-plus followers.

The fashionista then asked Copilot to help her create outfits based on the vivid Miami-inspired colors she was seeing. The result: four vibrant outfits that brought a little sun to Kelly’s New York winter.

AI, Kelly says, “feeds my creativity by offering up combinations I may not have thought of.”

Larger than IRL

Mats Steen never had the chance to know what an impact he’d make.

In the role-playing universe of World of Warcraft, Steen was known as Ibelin, a gentle private investigator with a charming smile and muscular physique. In real life, the avid gamer was a young Norwegian man living with Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

A decade after Steen died of the rare condition in 2014 at age 25, World of Warcraft created an in-game tribute to him and Norway established an annual award in his honor to recognize young role models in gaming.

Steen’s story is chronicled in the award-winning documentary “The Remarkable Life of Ibelin,” which won two awards at the?2024 Sundance Film Festival and is now on Netflix.

Ask Copilot for time back ??

You might be using Copilot daily at work, but is it doing as much for you as it could?

If not, Jared Spataro has a few ideas for you. Copilot is most powerful when you connect it to your unique work data, says Spataro, Microsoft’s chief marketing officer of AI at Work. To manage a mountain of emails, for example, you can use Copilot’s “prioritize my inbox” function and even tell Copilot what to look for, like messages from your boss.

You can point Copilot to specific work files in your prompts instead of digging through documents to find information and then paste it into prompts. Or you can use a SharePoint AI agent to scour files, answer questions about content on a SharePoint site and help you get ready for meetings. Gold star for you!

Whether you’re using AI to discover your own potential or uncover the Next Big Idea, we hope it’s helping you blaze new trails. See you next month!

Between issues, follow the Microsoft News and Stories LinkedIn page for the latest company news, or visit us at Microsoft Source to learn about people doing extraordinary things with technology.