PeopleofSuperintelligence

Lab leader

Ahmed Awadallah

Ahmed Awadallah is a Microsoft Research manager whose work spans small language models and multi-agent AI. He earned a Ph.D. in computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan, worked on natural-language processing at IBM and led Microsoft Research AI's Language & Information Technologies team by 2020. He coauthored Orca, Orca 2, AutoGen, Orca-Math and Fara1.5, with work on language-model reasoning, agent collaboration, mathematical problem solving and browser agents. He won the 2020 Karen Spärck Jones Award. He is a partner research manager at Microsoft Research AI Frontiers.

Works
192
Citations
3,747
h-index
34

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 18 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. By 2020

    Leading language technologies

    By 2020, he leads Microsoft Research AI's Language & Information Technologies team after earning a Ph.D. in computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan and working at IBM on natural-language processing.

  2. 2020

    The Karen Spärck Jones Award

    He wins the 2020 Karen Spärck Jones Award for contributions to natural language processing and information retrieval.

  3. June 2023

    Orca learns from GPT-4

    In June 2023, he coauthors Orca, a 13-billion-parameter model that learns language-model reasoning from GPT-4's explanation traces and step-by-step thought processes.

  4. November 2023

    Orca 2 teaches reasoning

    In November 2023, he coauthors Orca 2, which teaches small language models to choose reasoning strategies for different tasks.

  5. February 2024

    Orca-Math solves math problems

    In February 2024, he coauthors Orca-Math, a 7-billion-parameter model based on Mistral-7B that achieves 86.81% on GSM8K without external tools.

  6. August 2024

    An open-source agent framework

    In August 2024, he coauthors AutoGen, an open-source framework that lets developers compose multiple agents to converse in LLM applications.

  7. May 2026

    Fara1.5 for computer use

    In May 2026, he coauthors Fara1.5, a family of small computer-use models for web browsers.

  8. July 2026

    Partner research manager at Microsoft

    In July 2026, he is a partner research manager at Microsoft Research AI Frontiers.

A language model matched the links in this timeline to people, organizations and papers (provisional, model-judged).

Career

  1. Since 2026Microsoft ResearchLeader, Language & Information Technologies team
  2. 2014–2026Microsoft

Education

  1. University of MichiganPh.D. in Computer Science and Engineering

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

Most-cited works

  1. Meta Label Correction for Noisy Label Learning2021 · Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence · 203 citations
  2. QMSum: A New Benchmark for Query-based Multi-domain Meeting Summarization2021 · Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (NAACL-HLT) · 178 citationsWith Aslı Çelikyılmaz and Dragomir Radev
  3. Phi-3 Technical Report: A Highly Capable Language Model Locally on Your Phone2024 · 164 citationsWith Adil Salim, Ronen Eldan, Shital Shah, Sébastien Bubeck and Yin Tat Lee
  4. Understanding User Satisfaction with Intelligent Assistants2016 · 150 citations
  5. Automatic Online Evaluation of Intelligent Assistants2015 · International World Wide Web Conference (WWW) · 149 citations

From OpenAlex, as of 18 October 2026.

  1. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers rose from 2% to 33%Includes Microsoft. We estimate where leading AI researchers worked when their most-cited papers appeared. The company share rose from 2% in 1975–1979 to 33% in 2020–2024.
  2. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Microsoft. Our estimates of combined and median h-index at AI organizations, using current affiliations and OpenAlex records.
  3. Google alumni founded or led 77 other organizations, the most among the labs we compareIncludes Microsoft. We trace 177 organizations founded or led by AI lab alumni, and 186 career moves between the labs.
  4. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Includes Microsoft. Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI from 1962 to 2025, with a year-by-year chart.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Ahmed Awadallah yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Workshop SUM’20: State-based User Modelling k4all.org. Checked 18 October 2026.
  2. A Day in the Life of a Researcher at Microsoft: Ahmed Awadallah forwardfuture.com. Checked 18 October 2026.
  3. Orca: Progressive Learning from Complex Explanation Traces of GPT-4 arxiv.org. Checked 18 October 2026.
  4. Orca 2: Teaching Small Language Models How to Reason arxiv.org. Checked 18 October 2026.
  5. Orca-Math: Unlocking the potential of SLMs in Grade School Math arxiv.org. Checked 18 October 2026.
  6. AutoGen: Enabling Next-Gen LLM Applications via Multi-Agent Conversation microsoft.com. Checked 18 October 2026.
  7. Fara1.5 - A family of frontier computer use agent models microsoft.com. Checked 18 October 2026.
  8. Exclusive Interview with Ahmed Awadallah, Partner Research Manager, Microsoft Research AI Frontiers read.getsuperintel.com. Checked 18 October 2026.