Called to serve: Tech, research, and positive impact with Chris White

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This Microsoft Research Podcast episode profiles Chris White, director of the Catalyst Lab at Microsoft Research. White's career arc took him from a Harvard postdoc to an on-the-ground tech operations role in Afghanistan, where he worked with DARPA in 2010 testing new data analysis approaches designed to prevent violence and protect troops. After the program concluded, DARPA asked him to validate his work in the field directly. White later became a DARPA program manager and subsequently built dark-web search tools to help law enforcement identify and disrupt human trafficking networks—work recognized with the 2016 Presidential Award for Extraordinary Efforts to Combat Trafficking in Persons. The episode centers on the psychological challenge of working on problems connected to terrorism, trafficking, and organized crime, and how White sustains motivation through a focus on measurable impact. Host Weishung Liu draws out his views on 'problem selection'—choosing research challenges with real-world stakes—as a key discipline for applied researchers. There are no technical announcements or product releases in this episode. It is a biographical interview offering career and motivational context about a senior Microsoft Research leader whose lab focuses on AI applications with societal consequences.