Microsoft Corp. and Carnegie Mellon University today announced the creation of the Microsoft Carnegie Mellon Center for Computational Thinking. The center was made possible through a three-year, $1.5 million grant from Microsoft.

The center represents a long-term collaboration between Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon’s Computer Science Department and will support research in emerging areas of computer science, particularly those that can influence the thinking of other disciplines.

“Increasingly, scientists and researchers rely on computer science to enable them to sift through massive amounts of data and find breakthroughs that could provide new insights into the human body, the earth we live on and even the universe,” said Rick Rashid, senior vice president of Microsoft Research. “We are eager to explore this exciting new area of research with Carnegie Mellon.”

Rashid spoke at the Carnegie Mellon Symposium for Computational Thinking. Computational thinking, as developed by Jeannette M. Wing, head of Carnegie Mellon’s Computer Science Department, involves solving problems, designing systems and understanding human behavior by drawing on the concepts fundamental to computer science.