Lidong Zhou
Corporate Vice President, Chief Scientist of Microsoft Asia Pacific R&D Group, Managing Director of Microsoft Research Asia
About
Dr. Lidong Zhou is a Corporate Vice President at Microsoft, Chief Scientist of the Microsoft Asia Pacific R&D Group, and Managing Director of Microsoft Research Asia (opens in new tab).
With a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cornell University, Dr. Zhou’s career at Microsoft began in 2002. His journey has spanned across Microsoft’s Research labs, including the Silicon Valley lab as a researcher, the Redmond lab as a principal researcher and Research Manager of the Systems Research Group, and the Asia lab where he currently serves as the Managing Director since 2021.
Dr. Zhou’s expertise lies in the field of computer systems research, particularly in developing scalable, reliable, and trustworthy distributed systems, with best papers at the ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP), the USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI), and the USENIX Annual Technical Conference (ATC). He has played a pivotal role in the design and development of large-scale distributed systems, which are integral to various Microsoft products and services, from search engines and big data infrastructure to cloud systems and AI infrastructure.
Dr. Zhou is both an ACM Fellow and an IEEE Fellow. He has served on the editorial boards of ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (opens in new tab), ACM Transactions on Storage (opens in new tab), and IEEE Transactions on Computers (opens in new tab). In 2023, he chaired the ACM Software System Award Committee (opens in new tab) and currently chairs the steering committee of SOSP. He was the general Co-Chair of SOSP 2017 and will serve as the PC Co-Chair of OSDI 2025.
周礼栋博士现任微软公司全球资深副总裁、微软亚太研发集团首席科学家、微软亚洲研究院院长。
在康奈尔大学获得计算机科学博士学位后，周礼栋博士于2002年加入微软公司。他的职业生涯中遍及微软多个研究院，包括在微软硅谷研究院担任研究员，在微软雷德蒙研究院担任系统研究组首席研究员，以及在微软亚洲研究院担任常务副院长，并于2021年升任微软亚洲研究院院长。
周礼栋博士是系统研究领域首屈一指的专家，多年来一直专注于推动可靠、可信及可扩展的分布式系统的理论研究和实践探索。他在ACM操作系统原理大会（SOSP）、USENIX操作系统设计与实现大会（OSDI）和USENIX年度技术大会（ATC）上均获得过最佳论文奖。作为微软在设计和开发大规模分布式系统方面的重要技术带头人，周礼栋博士主持设计和开发的系统支持着微软从搜索引擎、大数据基础设施、云系统到AI基础设施的主要产品和服务。
周礼栋博士是电气电子工程师学会会士（IEEE Fellow）和国际计算机学会会士（ACM Fellow）。他曾是ACM计算机系统会刊（ACM Transactions on Computer Systems）、ACM计算机存储会刊（ACM Transactions on Storage）、IEEE计算机会刊（IEEE Transactions on Computers）的编委会成员。周礼栋博士还曾担任2017年SOSP大会联合主席，以及2023年ACM软件系统奖项评选委员会（ACM Software System Award Committee）主席。目前，他是SOSP指导委员会（Steering Committee）主席，并将担任2025年OSDI大会的程序委员会联合主席。
Featured content
NeurIPS 2024: The co-evolution of AI and systems with Lidong Zhou
Just after his NeurIPS 2024 keynote on the co-evolution of systems and AI, Microsoft CVP Lidong Zhou joins the podcast to discuss how rapidly advancing AI impacts the systems supporting it and the opportunities to use AI to enhance systems engineering itself.
The brave new world of cloud-scale systems and networking with Dr. Lidong Zhou
If you’re like me, you’re no longer amazed by how all your technologies can work for you. Rather, you’ve begun to take for granted that they simply should work for you. Instantly. All together. All the time. The fact that you’re not amazed is a testimony to the work that people like Dr. Lidong Zhou, Assistant Managing Director of Microsoft Research Asia, do every day. He oversees some of the cutting-edge systems and networking research that goes on behind the scenes to make sure you’re not amazed when your technologies work together seamlessly but rather, can continue to take it for granted that they will!