More generally, see peter norvig's talks on youtube where he talks about data being more agile than programming. The new frontier in computing is using data to get things done. Programming language researchers, bless their hearts, are nice people, but won't add to much computing in the future.
Research is by nature high risk/high reward. In most fields, it takes years for research to make it into an actual product. Programming language research doesn't stop at developing new languages. Automated testing tools like Microsoft's PEX fall under the same umbrella of formal methods.
Even if the research doesn't affect a completely new programming language, it could very likely have a strong hand in updating old ones. See programming language memory models for instance.
actor model (erlang,mozart/oz)
More generally, see peter norvig's talks on youtube where he talks about data being more agile than programming. The new frontier in computing is using data to get things done. Programming language researchers, bless their hearts, are nice people, but won't add to much computing in the future.