Ya-Qin Zhang
Managing Director
Microsoft Research China

Ya-Qin Zhang joined Microsoft Research in China in January 1999 as the Assistant Managing Director, leaving his post as the Director of Multimedia Technology Laboratory at Sarnoff Corporation in Princeton, NJ (formerly David Sarnoff Research Center, and RCA Laboratories). He has been engaged in research and commercialization of MPEG2/DTV, MPEG4/VLBR, and multimedia information technologies. He was with GTE Laboratories Inc. in Waltham, MA and Contel Technology Center in Virginia from 1989 to 1994. He has authored and co-authored over 200-refereed papers in leading international conferences and journals. He has been granted over 40 US patents in digital video, Internet, multimedia, wireless and satellite communications. Many of the technologies he and his team developed have become the basis for start-up ventures, commercial products, and international standards. He serves on the Board of Directors of five high-tech IT companies.

Ya-Qin served as the Editor-In-Chief for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS AND SYSTEMS FOR VIDEO TECHNOLOGY from July 1997 to July 1999. He was the Chairman of Visual Signal Processing and Communications Technical Committee of IEEE Circuits and Systems. He serves on the Editorial boards of seven other professional journals and over a dozen conference committees. He has been a key contributor to the ISO/MPEG and ITU standardization efforts in digital video and multimedia.

Ya-Qin has been a Fellow of IEEE since 1997. He received numerous awards, including several industry technical achievement awards and IEEE awards such as Jubilee Golden Medal. He was awarded as the "Research Engineer of the Year" in 1998 by the New Jersey Engineering Council for his "leadership and invention in communications technology, which has enabled dramatic advances in digital video compression and manipulation for broadcast and interactive television and networking applications." He received the prestigious national award as "The Outstanding Young Electrical Engineering of 1998," given annually to one electrical Engineer in US.

Zhang received his B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 1983 and 1985. He received his Ph.D in Electrical Engineering from George Washington University, Washington D.C. in 1989. He had executive business training from Harvard University.