MS/Cambridge to make announcement

Microsoft is looking to the UK's finest young minds to boost its product development. Seemingly confirming reports that have appeared in the last fortnight, the University of Cambridge today said it will host a press conference with Microsoft to discuss "a number of major news announcements" next Tuesday, June 17 in London.

Speakers will include Microsoft chief technology officer Nathan Myrhrvold; Microsoft UK managing director David Svendsen; Professor Alec Broers, vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge; and "a senior government representative".

A spokeswoman for Cambridge declined to comment on details of the conference but it is widely expected that the pair will announce a Cambridge-based research campus, possibly dedicated to blue sky research and development.

Cambridge's Broers was formally head of the department of engineering at Cambridge and spent 16 years as a researcher at IBM's Thomas J Watson Research Center in New York specialising in microelectronics.

Cambridge, of course, has a fine tradition of computing breakthroughs and is the alma mater of names like Isaac Newton, Charles Babbage and Alan Turing. Its alumni were key in developing multi-user computers, Unix and "Janet", the Joint Academic Network that linked educational institutions the world over long before the Internet became a household world.