Yihong Ding, a PhD candidate in computer science at BYU, was one of 28 PhD students invited to participate in a special event organized by the Microsoft Live Search team.

In May, Microsoft's Live Search team invited 28 of the top PhD students from the United States and Canada to travel to Redmond for an on-site interview and Live Search event. The event and interview process was unique in that the Microsoft team searched out many of the 28 candidates itself--none of the 28 candidates had received telephone interviewes by the team, and many of the candidates, including Yihong, had not even submitted a resume to Microsoft in the first place. Yihong's invitation was extended because Live Search team members had become aware of his excellent scholarship and research in the field of computer science.

The focus of the event was to improve Microsoft search. Each of the 28 participants selected had a strong background in an area related to web search. Some of the areas of expertise included query optimization, distributed computing, image process, data mining, and natural language processing. Yihong was the only participant with a primary background in his area of expertise, semantic web. Yihong remarks, "I found it exciting to be in a group of young scientists of varied disciplinary areas while at the same time with a focused general theme."

During the event, Microsoft made sure that Yihong and his fellow candidates were treated to the very best, including lodgings in the luxurious Westin Bellevue and chauffeured limousines. Yihong was able to meet with program leaders from Live Search and leading web experts from Microsoft Research. He was also given the chance to contribute in a session where the participants, Yihong in particular, were asked to share all of their "crazy ideas." He was able to offer his suggestions and insights into the future of online searches.

Summing up his experience, Yihong remarks, "I appreciated this opportunity...it gave me a chance to hear the first-hand opinions about the future of Web search from the most frontier industrial developers and researchers, as well as from many of my peers--PhD candidates from all over the North America." And he doesn't forget to add that he "had a wonderful journey to Seattle."