Microsoft Corporation has announced the 12 winners of its Accelerating Search in Academic Research program, including Lehigh’s Brian Davison, assistant professor of computer science and engineering. The program was developed by Microsoft to discover and fund academic research that will improve Internet search technologies, and data mining, discovery and analysis.

	Brian Davison, Computer Science and Engineering, working with students

“As anyone who uses the Internet knows, it’s not really about ‘search’ — it’s about ‘discover,’” said Gary William Flake, Ph.D., founder and director of Microsoft’s Live Labs and a Technical Fellow at Microsoft. “Through this process, we have found a wealth of academic talent and ideas for search and algorithm development that we think will transform our ability to harness the power of the Web in the years to come.”

Davison was selected for a project that seeks to reduce or eliminate the effect of Web spam on the usefulness of search engine results.

More information on the research program and the awardees is available via Microsoft’s Web site.