Portrait of Kenji Takeda

Kenji Takeda

Director, Academic Health and AI Partnerships

Project InnerEye: medical image of a skull

Project InnerEye Open-Source Software

Project InnerEye open-source software (OSS) aims to increase productivity for research and development of best-in-class medical imaging AI and help to enable deployment using Microsoft Azure cloud computing…

microscopic image of coronavirus COVID-19

Studies in Pandemic Preparedness

This program aims to increase the pace and scale of our efforts by deepening our global academic collaborations to help address the current situation and better prepare for…

About

Dr Kenji Takeda is Director of Academic Health and AI Partnerships (opens in new tab) for Microsoft Research Outreach. He is  empowering researchers to develop and deploy human-centric AI and machine learning to transform healthcare by exploiting data in the cloud, empowering those at the frontline of healthcare, and moving towards precision medicine. This includes work in medical imaging on Project InnerEye OSS (opens in new tab), supporting partners to clinically deploy AI for radiotherapy cancer treatment in the NHS (opens in new tab). He coordinates Microsoft’s Studies in Pandemic Preparedness collaborative research program (opens in new tab) that brought together leading researchers from academia and Microsoft to to help address the current situation and better prepare for future pandemics. He is working with the global healthcare data research community on the development of Trusted Research Environments (TREs) (opens in new tab), serving on the UK Medical Research Council Data Science Strategic Advisory (opens in new tab) and Translational Research (opens in new tab) Groups. He regularly advises funding agencies and research organisations on innovation and technology strategy. He is a visiting industry fellow at the Alan Turing Institute (opens in new tab) and visiting fellow at the University of Southampton, UK.

He was a member of Microsoft Global Hackathon 2023, 2022 and 2021 winning teams, and Health Data Research UK Team of the Year (opens in new tab) in 2020.

He was previously global lead for Microsoft’s Azure for Research (opens in new tab) program, empowering researchers to take best advantage of cloud computing, including through data science, high-performance computing, and the internet of things.

He has a passion for developing novel computational and system-wide approaches to tackle fundamental and applied problems in science, engineering, and healthcare. He has extensive experience in cloud computing, high performance and high productivity computing, and engineering (aeronautics and astronautics (opens in new tab), aerodynamics (opens in new tab), aeroacoustics (opens in new tab), and flight simulation (opens in new tab)).

Prior to joining Microsoft, he was tenured Associate Professor for Aeronautics (opens in new tab) at the University of Southampton, UK, where he co-founded the Microsoft Institute for High Performance Computing, (opens in new tab)Airbus Noise Technology Centre (opens in new tab), and the world’s first Master’s course in race car aerodynamics (opens in new tab) working with many Formula One teams. He has received numerous awards, including the Royal Aeronautical Society Silver Award, Royal Academy of Engineering/ExxonMobil Gold medal (opens in new tab) for excellence in engineering teaching, and inaugural Royal Academy of Engineering Innovation prize (opens in new tab).

He worked for many years as a freelance computer journalist with ZDNet, GameSpot, Computer Gaming World, and PC Pilot.