Credit for the idea of establishing a facility that mixed UW-Madison graduate students with full-time Microsoft staff in a collaborative research setting belongs to Peter Spiro, a Microsoft Technical Fellow and 1985 UW-Madison graduate. Over the years that he managed the SQL Server product group, Peter had hired many UW graduates and felt that it was important for Microsoft to both broaden and deepen the connection between Microsoft and UW-Madison, and that a good way to do so was to establish this facility in Madison.
