Charles P. (Chuck) Thacker joined Microsoft in 1997 as Director of Advanced Systems to assist in the establishment of Microsoft's Cambridge Research Lab, where he was involved in recruiting, defining the research agenda, publicity, and establishing the lab's operating procedures. At the end of this two-year assignment, he returned to the U.S. and worked on the first Tablet PC. In 2005, he returned to Microsoft Research, where he is building a group to engage in computer architecture research at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley Campus.

Before joining Microsoft, Thacker worked for the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), and later at the Digital Equipment Systems Research Center. He served as project leader of the MAXC timesharing system, and as the chief designer on Alto, the first personal computer to use a bit-mapped display and mouse for user interface. Thacker is also the co-inventor of the Ethernet local area network, the DEC Firefly multiprocessor workstation, and the AN1 and AN2 networks.

He has published widely and holds numerous patents in the areas of computer architecture and networking, and has led a number of seminal projects in these areas. Thacker was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and is a distinguished alumnus of the Computer Science Department at the University of California. He is a member of the IEEE, a fellow of the ACM, a Member of the American Association of Arts and Sciences, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering, which in 2004 awarded him the Charles Stark Draper Prize (with A. Kay, B. Lampson, and R. Taylor) for the development of the first networked distributed personal computer system.

In 2007 Thacker received the IEEE’s John Von Neumann medal, which is awarded for outstanding achievements in computer-related science and technology, for his central role in the creation of the personal computer and the development of networked computer systems.

In 2007 Thacker was also given an award from the Computer History Museum for his work on the Alto and “innovations in networked personal computer systems and laser printing technologies.”