Microsoft Research has made announcement of a research and collaboration deal with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) on Friday.

As per the contract, Microsoft Research will supply funds and research expertise by 2010 in order to help in key projects in the fields of life sciences research and advanced high-performance computing platform that are based on the on Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003.

IISc is the primary group elected in India as part of Microsoft Research's scheme to collaborate with well-known institutions throughout the world in highly developed computing for science and engineering.

Tony Hey, Vice President, External Research, Microsoft Research, said, “Our mission is to conduct state-of-the art research and apply technology to reduce the time to insights for scientific discovery and drive innovations. We aim to empower scientists by providing them advanced computing technologies across scientific domains. This collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science is the first one in India. We are already working with more than 20 leading research institutions and government agencies around the world to positively impact science and engineering research.”

Hey said that the Microsoft Research would team up with IISc on tasks relating biological data mapping and on high performance applications utilising commodity clusters for technical research.