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 for Microsoft Research Accelerator. He is empowering researchers to develop and deploy AI foundation models to accelerate scientific discovery (opens in new tab) and move towards precision medicine for all (opens in new tab). His current focus is on Microsoft’s Accelerating Foundation Models Research (AFMR) initiative (opens in new tab) and data for AI research.

In health, he led the Project InnerEye (opens in new tab) OSS community, supporting partners to clinically deploy AI to accelerate cancer treatment in the NHS (opens in new tab). During the COVID-19 pandemic he led Microsoft’s Studies in Pandemic Preparedness (opens in new tab) collaborative research program and served on the Royal Society Rapid Assistance in Modelling the Pandemic (RAMP) (opens in new tab) steering committee to bolster UK epidemic modelling efforts. He was previously global lead for Microsoft’s Azure for Research program (opens in new tab), empowering researchers to take best advantage of cloud computing, including through data science, high-performance computing, and the internet of things. He was a member of Microsoft Global Hackathon (opens in new tab) 2023, 2022 and 2021 winning teams, and Health Data Research UK Team of the Year in 2020 (opens in new tab).

He serves on the UK Medical Research Council (opens in new tab) Data Science Strategic Advisory and Translational Research Groups, and regularly advises funding agencies and research organisations on innovation and technology strategy, such as contributing to the US-UK Scientific Forum on Researcher Access to Data (opens in new tab). He is a visiting fellow at the Alan Turing Institute (opens in new tab) and University of Southampton, UK.

Prior to joining Microsoft, he was tenured Associate Professor for Aeronautics at the University of Southampton, UK (opens in new tab), 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) with Formula One teams.

He has received numerous awards, including the inaugural Royal Academy of Engineering Innovation prize (opens in new tab), Royal Aeronautical Society Silver Award (opens in new tab), and the Royal Academy of Engineering/ExxonMobil Gold medal (opens in new tab) for excellence in university engineering learning and teaching.

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