How are research papers typeset? I just noticed that most of the research papers published (in the engineering faculty) are formatted such that each page contains two columns worth of information, side by side, for example:



If I were to write a research paper, then each page would only contain one column of material.

Furthermore, some material (such as the abstract) can occupy both sides at the same time. This is impossible to do using Word document.



Can someone enlighten me as to what type of formatting is used to produce this effect? Is there a standard template?
The examples that you show look like quite similar to either typical IEEE paper formats or ACM paper formats.  Engineering conferences and journals tend to use this type of extremely dense format, and often provide templates (like those linked above) in both LaTeX and Word.  

Yes, you can do these things in Word, especially following a provided template, but you probably should not: LaTeX is very widely used in the scientific world because it is much better at precisely typesetting scientific papers, especially mathematical equations.  LaTeX is also much easier to do collaborative writing with, since its textual format is well-suited for diffs and merges with version control software. If you contemplate a career in engineering or mathematical research, you are well advised to invest a little bit of time in learning LaTeX, as it will make many things in your life much easier.  Life sciences, on the other hand, tend to leave all of the formatting to the journal and submit everything in arbitrarily formatted Word.