Stewart Tansley is a Director at Microsoft Research Connections. He is responsible for academic research partnerships in Natural User Interface (NUI). He was acting product manager for the Kinect for Windows SDK from Microsoft Research in 2011. Before Microsoft, he spent 13 years in the telecommunications and satellite industry focusing on technology transfer. His PhD is in Artificial Intelligence applied to Engineering, from Loughborough University, UK. He has published a variety of papers on robotics, artificial intelligence, network management and has several patents. He co-authored a book on software engineering for artificial intelligence applications and co-edited The Fourth Paradigm, a book of visionary essays on the emerging field of data-intensive science.