Desney Tan, PhD

Dr. Desney Tan is corporate vice president and managing director of the core Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Research Lab in Redmond, Washington. He was previously vice president and managing director for Health and Life Science R&D at Microsoft, where he’s worked in various leading research roles since 2004. He is also an Affiliate Professor of Computer Science and engineering at the University of Washington Seattle since 2007, where he co-founded the National Science Foundation Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering and chaired its industry advisory board.

Dr. 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 an impact in areas such as autonomous navigation, entertainment and consumer products, as well as health and life sciences.

Dr. Tan is the named inventor on more than 100 granted patents, and author of numerous academic publications on topics such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and human-computer interaction. He serves as board director for health tech company ResMed (NYSE: RMD) as well as life sciences non-profit Washington Research Foundation; as senior advisor and chief technologist to IntuitiveX, a medical device and life sciences innovation partner and catalyst; and as advisor to Proprio, which is developing an advanced surgical navigation platform. He achieved the rank of Lieutenant in the Singapore Armed Forces over two-and-a-half years of active-duty service, and still serves in its reserves.

Dr. Tan has a Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University, and a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Notre Dame.