A Day in the Life at Microsoft Research: Behind the AI Breakthroughs
Published on November 7, 2025 at 04:03 PM
We're in the midst of a significant AI transformation, prompting a closer look at the individuals driving this change. Five Microsoft researchers recently shared insights with Forward Future, a daily AI newsletter, into their work, challenges, and the evolving landscape of artificial intelligence.
Meet the Researchers:
Trista Chen, Director, Microsoft’s AI Research Center: Chen is focused on establishing trustworthy AI through advancements in face recognition, liveness detection, and anti-spoofing. The team ensures AI can discern real human interaction in an era dominated by deepfakes.
Chen emphasizes, “If AI can’t tell whether it’s interacting with a real person in real-time, its power risks doing more harm than good. Our focus is the essence of live personhood and machine-person agency: ensuring AI knows not just who it interacts with, but that the interaction is real, current, and trustworthy.”
Flavio Griggio, Research Manager, Microsoft Quantum: Griggio's work involves building superconducting circuits, critical to Microsoft's vision for reliable and scalable quantum computing. The goal is to create quantum machines resilient to errors.
“My team’s readout circuits are key to making this happen — they help us actually see and use the power of topological qubits,” Griggio explains. “When we get this right, it could have a tremendous impact — helping research in medicine, energy, environmental science, smart materials, and much more.”
Ahmed Awadallah, Partner Research Manager, Microsoft Research: Awadallah is working on agentic AI systems (like AutoGen) and small, high-performance language models (such as Phi-4-reasoning), in order to advance how AI agents reason, collaborate, and solve complex tasks. These agents interact, learn, and improve over time while maintaining oversight, alignment and transparency.
“We are already witnessing significant progress in both capabilities and adoption of AI agents, and I’m eager to see continued advancements in the near future — particularly in making them more reliable and trustworthy, so they can increasingly augment human capabilities in everyday life,” Awadallah says.
Jina Suh, Principal Researcher, Microsoft: Suh is designing AI with psychological safety in mind, exploring the intersection of AI and mental health. Her research focuses on AI's potential psychological risks and how to design AI to maximize human potential and wellbeing.
Suh notes, “We are at the early stages of understanding a phenomenon that could unfold over decades and that could impact not just individuals but society. Success to me looks like the technology/AI industry recognizing their role in shaping and influencing people’s mental health, regardless of whether that technology is intentionally designed for mental health.”
Cecily Morrison, Senior Principal Research Manager, Microsoft Research Cambridge: Morrison is leading efforts to ensure AI reflects human diversity, by including community voices in model development to make AI inclusive and extensible for everyone.
“The world is a kaleidoscope of people — rich in history, cultural nuance, and different ways of being. My research team focuses on how we bring that plurality into AI models,” Morrison says. “AI should be the mirror of the full richness of our societies, but it is currently limited by data, architectures, and evaluation approaches.”