Microsoft is opening a research lab in New York city that aims to benefit from interaction with the academic and tech communities in the area. The lab has hired 15 researchers of which the majority, including David Pennock, the assistant managing director of the new lab, are joining from Yahoo Research. The New York lab joins 12 other Microsoft research labs in seven countries, and will focus on creating new disciplines at the intersection of computer science and the social sciences. Microsoft already works in the areas of social media, empirical economics, machine learning, and machine learning.”]