Dr Rick Rashid, the director of Microsoft Research, was named University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) honorary doctoral degree on Nov. 1st.The ceremony was hosted by vice president ZHANG Shulin. HOU Jianguo, USTC president, LI Weiping, dean of information school, HONG Xiaowen, dean of Microsoft research Asia (MSRA)and more than 200 students and teachers attended in student center of USTC east campus.

The honorary doctoral degree which needs national accreditation is conferred as a way of honoring a distinguished visitor's contributions to a specific field or to society in general. In thirty years, USTC only awarded three Nobel physics laureates - Salam, Chao Chung Ting and Hooft.
President HOU Jianguo remarked “It’s an honor to award Dr Rick Rashid USTC honorary doctoral degree for his great contributions to the field of computer science and talent cultivation of computer science in china. From now on, USTC has one more famous alumnus in the world.” HOU gave wishes about a long-term cooperation between USTC and MSRA including promotion on research frontier and talent cultivation in the advanced technical field.
Vice president ZHANG Shulin read the file "Consent letter to award Rick Rashid honorary doctorate degree" released by academic degrees committee of the state council, then president HOU awarded the honorary doctorate certificate and wore the badge of USTC for Rick.
Rick represented thanks and gave a lecture entitled “a look back and a look forward” with sharing the more than 40 years research experience and predicting the role of basic research in the future technical field.

Rick Rashid is also Member of the National Academy of Engineering and received the IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award in 2008.
Microsoft Research Asia, Microsoft’s fundamental research facility in the Asia Pacific region, was founded by Rashid in 1998 and had the longest cooperation with USTC.
So far, USTC and MSRA have built the multimedia and communication key laboratory of the ministry of education, talent cultivation experimental zone of the ministry of education, national engineering center and USTC-MSRA software engineering center as a result of cooperation based on both sides. The two sides have jointly trained 57 doctoral students, and 32 of them got "Microsoft scholar" scholarship. 24 undergraduates obtained "Microsoft little scholar" scholarship. More than 420 students visited the Microsoft Asia research, who become the new power to promote future development in IT field
By attracting the best talent from Asia and across the globe, Microsoft Research Asia has grown into a world-class research laboratory with more than 230 researchers and developers and more than 250 visiting scientists and students.

(WU Xu, USTC News Center, Photo by YAO Qiong)