Microsoft's Cortana is becoming a seamless research tool for scholars early next year

Microsoft's foray into the personal assistant business with Cortana opens up many opportunities including integration with other branches of knowledge. One area that may be unfamiliar to the general public is Microsoft's work with Academic Search http://(academic.research.microsoft.com), which is a general search tool for finding articles on particular types of inquiry or the people in those science fields. Indeed, Microsoft Research used to have a Windows Phone 7 app to use this service.

Microsoft Research just published a new video where they discuss how Academic Search and Cortana are merging in early 2015. The demonstration was given at the annual Microsoft Research Faculty Summit where the presenters asked how they could turn Cortana into a research assistant and it follows upon the revelation of Project Adam, which we detailed yesterday.

The difficulty in the task for Cortana is discerning names e.g. Yu Dong, a researcher at Microsoft. In a demonstration question about Microsoft researcher Yu Dong, Cortana recognized him as "You don't" or "U Dong." However, in a newer test version of Cortana, the AI can distinguish the difference, bringing up Yu Dong the researcher, including professional and biographic information. Delving down deeper, Bing brings up a detailed about page, publications, citations, coauthors and how a person is associated to you, a sort of "seven degrees" connection.

Cortana can use this information to recommend talks that academics should attend, or give a personalized schedule based off of research interests. In fact, through Cortana's Notebook feature, which lets users specify interests, scientists can enter in precise research topics for Cortana under a new Academics category. Cortana then recommends papers and talks to the user without them searching for it, much like how Cortana's news works now on Windows Phone 8.1

The goal of this project is obviously to make Cortana significantly more useful search tool for professors and researchers, by letting Cortana map the academic world on a lexical and information level. Consequently, someone doing research could inquire within Cortana about other scholars or have topics brought to their attention, all powered by Bing and Microsoft's Academic Search engine.

Microsoft hopes to have Cortana, Bing and Academic Search integration by early 2015, and they are asking professionals in academia to head to https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ to build up their scholastic profile to build "the most accurate representation" for their search engine.

To watch presentation yourself, head to the 36-minute mark in the video.

Source: Microsoft Reasearch; Thanks, @shashank_green, for the tip!

CATEGORIES
Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central. He is also the head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007 when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and wearable tech. He has reviewed laptops for over 10 years and is particularly fond of 2-in-1 convertibles, Arm64 processors, new form factors, and thin-and-light PCs. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, performed polysomnographs in NYC, and was a motion-picture operator for 17 years.

Latest in Cortana
Surface Laptop 4 Amd 2021 Keyboard Lights
Microsoft confirms Lapsus$ breach, denies danger of source code leaks
Cortana Face Eww
Lapsus$ claims to leak 90% of Microsoft Bing's source code
Cortana Play My Emails
Steve Ballmer tried to name Cortana 'Bingo' before leaving as Microsoft CEO
Cortana and Alexa
Microsoft's Cortana no longer integrates with Amazon's Alexa
Cortana Ios End
Today is the last day you can use Cortana on iOS and Android
Cortana Ios End
Cortana apps on iOS and Android now warn about their upcoming demise
Latest in News
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 Zombies mode screenshots for Shattered Veil map.
The next Call of Duty Zombies map, "Shattered Veil", is dropping earlier than expected
Helldivers 2
The new Helldivers 2 Illuminate Major Order is so important that we got a new stratagem for it
Hogwarts Legacy troll hero image
Hogwarts Legacy DLC reportedly canceled by WB Games
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege
Rumored Ubisoft and Tencent agreement comes to fruition with 25% stake and new division for the Assassin's Creed developer
In-game screenshot of the player consuming an enemy in Shadow Labyrinth
This isn't your grandpa's Pac-Man — Bandai Namco's iconic character gets a gritty new action game this Summer
Key art for Dragon Quest 1 and 2 HD-2D remake
Every PC and Xbox game shown off during Nintendo Direct March 2025