Posted by Rob Knies

On Oct. 28, Hsiao-Wuen Hon, managing director of Microsoft Research Asia, signed Phase IV of the Ministry of Education of China-Microsoft Memorandum of Understanding, commonly known as the Great Wall Plan. (Pictured above are Hon, left foreground, shaking hands with Shen Yang, deputy director-general of the Ministry of Education's Department of International Cooperation and Exchange.)

The agreement extends Microsoft’s commitment to work with academia in China to advance the state of the art in basic research and to foster the next generation of research leaders.

In conjunction with the signing, I had a chance to talk with Lolan Song, Microsoft Research Asia senior director of Microsoft Research Connections, to learn more about the Great Wall Plan, which began in 2002, with previous updates occurring in 2005 and 2008.

Given the great strides taken in e-commerce over the past decade, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that such transactions are still in their infancy.

Hence the need for the Academic Research Center for E-Commerce Technologies, announced Oct. 9 by the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and Microsoft Research. Those entities signaled their intention of co-establishing a facility that will promote and fund basic research in computer science, artificial intelligence, game theory, economics, and psychology, with a focus on the connections between these subjects when considered from an e-commerce perspective.

The center, a five-year joint research and education partnership, is the first academic research program involving Microsoft Research in Israel. The effort is designed to explore scientific and technological insights in e-commerce, such as online advertising and the use of social networks for commerce. Over the next five years, Microsoft will invest $1.5 million in the center, which will be located at The Technion campus in Haifa, Israel.