Zhang Yaqin

Overview

Zhang Yaqin is a researcher and technology manager in electrical engineering and intelligent science. His career runs from university study in China, through a doctorate and nearly sixteen years at Microsoft, to the presidency of Baidu, and then back to academia at Tsinghua University.^[1][2]

Education

Zhang earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1983, and a master's degree in the same subject from the same university in 1985.^[2] He received a doctor of science in electrical engineering from George Washington University in 1989.^[2] Electrical engineering is the field in which a great deal of work on signals, communications and computing hardware sits, and a doctor of science is a research degree: it is awarded for an original piece of research that other researchers have examined.

Microsoft

Zhang worked at Microsoft for nearly 16 years.^[1] The roles listed for him there cover three rather different kinds of work.

As managing director and chief scientist of Microsoft Research Asia he was on the research side. A chief scientist in an industrial laboratory is normally the person who sets the technical direction of a research group and presents its work to the rest of the company, while a managing director carries responsibility for running the laboratory itself.

As chairman of Microsoft China he was on the country-management side. A chairman of a national subsidiary or country organisation generally represents the company locally and coordinates its activity in that market.

As global vice president of the mobile and embedded business he was on the product side, responsible for a line of business at the level of the whole company. The mobile and embedded business is the part of a software company concerned with phones and with devices built around a dedicated function rather than a general-purpose computer.

Baidu

In September 2014 Zhang joined Baidu as president.^[1] At a large internet company the presidency is a senior operating position rather than a research one, sitting close to the top of the company and covering its business as a whole rather than a single laboratory or product group. He retired from Baidu in October 2019.^[1]

Tsinghua and AIR

On 31 December 2019 Zhang joined Tsinghua University as a chair professor of intelligent science.^[1] A chair professorship is a senior academic post carrying a named title; it usually goes to a researcher who is expected to build a group and a direction around their own work, and it comes with more freedom over what to work on than an ordinary faculty position.

At Tsinghua he leads the effort to set up the university's Institute for AI Industry Research (AIR).^[1] The name states the aim: an institute concerned with AI research and with how that research is taken up in industry, rather than with fundamental questions alone. Setting up such an institute means assembling people, agreeing on research directions, and building the links through which academic work reaches companies.

What the career shows

The sequence — a master's degree in China, a doctorate abroad, an industrial research laboratory, country-level management, a global product line, the presidency of an internet company, then a chair professorship and a new institute — passes through most of the places where computing and AI research is done. It also shows that in this field the boundary between university and company is porous: the same person can do research in a corporate laboratory, run a business, and then return to teaching and institution-building, carrying the industrial view back with him.

That combination is part of why the move to Tsinghua matters beyond one appointment. An institute intended to connect AI research with industry needs people who have seen both sides of that connection, and Zhang's time in a corporate research laboratory, in country management and in a product business is exactly that experience.^[1]