Dr. Yongdong Wang

Microsoft Corporate Vice President | Chairman of Asia Pacific R&D Group | General Manager of STC Asia

Dr. Yongdong Wang is a corporate vice president of Microsoft, chairman of the Microsoft Asia Pacific R&D Group (APRD), and general manager of the Microsoft Software Technology Center Asia (STCA). He is responsible for the strategy and direction of Microsoft's innovation and product development in the Asia-Pacific region.  

Dr. Wang joined Microsoft in June 2009 as general manager of the Microsoft Search Technology Center Asia. In November 2011, he became the first to head STCA, which focused on search technology, as well as the advertising platform and Office. In 2014, Dr. Wang was appointed CTO of APRD. In February of 2017, Dr. Wang was promoted to corporate vice president of Microsoft and in 2022, he moved from the CTO role to provide additional leadership as chairman of APRD.  

Prior to Microsoft, Dr. Wang served as the vice president of International Search Engineering at Yahoo. From 1991 to 2003, he worked at Sybase and then Inktomi, focusing on developing distributed database systems and web search engines. 

Dr. Wang received his PhD in computer science from U.C. Berkeley in 1992. He taught at U.C. Berkeley from 1993 to 1999 as a visiting lecturer. He grew up in China and received his BS in computer science from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 1984.