Desney Tan

Dr. Desney Tan is a seasoned executive who has built and run multidisciplinary global innovation teams – leveraging expertise in hardware and devices, software development, applied machine learning and artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, and applied science to make impact in areas such as autonomous navigation, entertainment and consumer products, as well as health and life sciences. At Microsoft, Desney is Corporate Vice President and Managing Director for Microsoft Research, a multidisciplinary global organization working to create scientific knowledge and deliver innovation that leads to positive human impact at scale. His R&D portfolio includes work in systems and infrastructure, artificial intelligence and algorithms, as well as human-computer interaction and sociotechnical systems. He had founded and run Microsoft Health Futures, Microsoft's health and life science moonshot factory. His prior work has shipped in various versions of Azure, Windows, Office, the Microsoft Handwriting Recognition Engine and Tablet Input Panel, Xbox Kinect, and the Microsoft Band. Beyond Microsoft, Desney holds an affiliate faculty appointment in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, serves on the Board of Directors for ResMed (NYSE:RMD, ASX:RMD), 1910 Genetics, Artificial, and the Washington Research Foundation. He is senior advisor and chief technologist for Seattle-based life science incubator IntuitiveX, advises multiple startup companies (e.g. Proprio Vision, Immortal Studios), and is an active startup and real estate investor. Desney was honored as one of MIT Technology Review's 2007 Young Innovators Under 35 for work on brain-computer interfaces and a 2012 Kavli Fellow by the US National Academy of Sciences. He was named one of SciFi Channel's Young Visionaries at TED 2009, as well as Forbes' Revolutionaries: Radical Thinkers and their World-Changing Ideas for work on Whole Body Computing. Desney is amazingly fortunate to have a family that supports (or at least tolerates) his crazy work habits, and it is great that his wife Angela and kids Ayden and Zachary are always there when he comes up for air.