Sailesh Chutani
Director, External Research & Programs Group
Microsoft Research Redmond
Microsoft Corp.

Sailesh Chutani is the director and founder of the External Research & Programs group—an integral part of Microsoft Research that works closely with the academic research community. His passion for nurturing strong, mutually supportive relationships between Microsoft Research and the academic community has been vital in initiating the company’s engagement in robotics, bioinformatics, and affordable computing for emerging markets. His teams invest in innovative research, collaborate with academia and governments to advance education, cultivate next-generation academic thought leaders, and partner to build knowledge economies through a variety of global and regional initiatives and programs.

Chutani has been with Microsoft since 1999 when he joined the Microsoft® TV Group. There, he helped the company enter the market for interactive TV software and was instrumental in bringing to market the next generation of MSN® TV.

Before joining Microsoft, Chutani anticipated and pioneered federated-systems architecture at HP Labs for managing complex distributed systems that cross organization boundaries. While with Oracle, he led the company’s Internet strategy for multiple products. He also played a key role in founding Transarc Corp., where he did seminal work on distributed file systems. These systems are widely deployed by universities and IT departments.

Chutani has been an active participant at academic and industry conferences, as well as in standards bodies such as the World Wide Web Consortium, the Internet Engineering Task Force, and the Object Management Group. He frequently presents keynote speeches on issues related to the impact of research on society and the impact of technology on education. He has authored more than a dozen publications. Chutani holds one patent, and the teams he has managed have been awarded 10 patents.

He is on the industry advisory boards of the American Society for Engineering Education and the University of Michigan, and he is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Association for Computing Machinery.

Chutani received his doctorate from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, his master’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

Chutani enjoys mountaineering, running, skiing, history, and sitting on a jury for documentary film festivals. He and his family live in the Seattle area.