Stewart Tansley is responsible for academic partnerships in Device-Oriented Computing (DOC), including such areas as Robotics research and Sensor Networks research, as part of External Research in Microsoft Research. Before joining Microsoft in 2001, he spent 13 years in the telecommunications industry in software research and development, focusing on technology transfer. Stewart has a PhD in Artificial Intelligence applied to Engineering from Loughborough University, UK. He has published a variety of papers on robotics for education, artificial intelligence (AI) and network management, several patents, and has co-authored a book on software engineering for AI applications. In 2009 he co-edited The Fourth Paradigm, a book collating visionary essays on the emerging field of data-intensive science.