Microsoft Expands Cryptography Activities In India

BANGALORE, India — Microsoft Research, the software giant’s applied and basic research arm, is expanding its activities at its year-old lab here. It also unveiled at its annual research symposium here a prototype of a multi-lingual and interactive digital map of the country.

The project has been taken up in partnership with India’s ministry of science and technology and using Virtual Earth technology. This prototype is reportedly the first of its kind and while some information cannot be tampered with, users can add information on their areas to specific locations on the map in a Wikipedia-like manner, said Richard Rashid, senior vice-president, Microsoft Research.

Microsoft Research India already engages in rigorous software engineering, multi-lingual systems, digital geographies, hardware and communications and technology for emerging markets, but is adding cryptography, security, algorithms and multimedia security. It is one of three such labs outside the U.S., and one of six such worldwide.

The research team, about 30 now, and will be expanded in size over the next 18 months, said P. Anandan, managing director, Microsoft Research Lab India Pvt. Ltd.

“We have made excellent progress, especially in the technology for emerging markets area, where we have come out with a multiple mouse enabling about six children to use a single computer simultaneously," he said.

Other work relates to machine translations as a Web-based service. The lab here has also tied up with the Indian Institute of Information Technology (Hyderabad) on graphics-related research and with the Indian Institute of Technology (Mumbai) on developing a sensor network for landslide warnings. "