IDIES Director and Bloomberg Professor Alexander Szalay has been recognized with the Outstanding Collaborator Award given by Microsoft. This award has been given to academic collaborators over the past 25 years who have made a significant contribution to computational research in a variety of scientific fields.
“In the 25 years since its founding in 1991, Microsoft Research has grown to be a worldwide symbol of excellence in computer science. Our over 1,000 scientists, engineers, and designers produce technologies that change the lives of people every day through their innovative software, systems, and designs. We are proud of our accomplishments, but in reality they are all founded on a model of open collaboration with academia. The Microsoft Research Outstanding Collaborator Award 2016 highlight and celebrate some of the amazing academics who have worked with us over the years. We salute all our academic collaborators over the years and thank them warmly for their contributions to making Microsoft Research great.”
“Alexander Szalay was a close collaborator of Jim Gray from 1999 to 2007. Together, they made many important contributions to the use of relational database systems for eScience in general, and astronomy in particular. Their best-known work is SkyServer, which provides public Internet access to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). This system stores its data in Microsoft SQL Server, which is used in innovative ways to offer the types of queries of interest to astronomers. In 2007, Alexander was the first recipient of the Jim Gray eScience Award, awarded by Microsoft Research to a researcher who has made an outstanding contribution to the field of data-intensive computing. With the award, Alexander was ‘recognized for his foundational contributions to interdisciplinary advances in the field of astronomy and groundbreaking work with Jim Gray.'”
You can learn more information about all of the recipients in Microsoft’s Outstanding Collaborator Award Booklet.
