Hsiao-Wuen Hon at Microsoft Research

Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Asia-Pacific R&D Group, Microsoft Research Asia

About

Dr. Hsiao-Wuen Hon is corporate vice president of Microsoft, chairman of Microsoft’s Asia-Pacific R&D Group, and managing director of Microsoft Research Asia. He drives Microsoft’s strategy for research and development activities in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as collaborations with academia.

Dr. Hon has been with Microsoft since 1995. He joined Microsoft Research Asia in 2004 as deputy managing director, stepping into the role of managing director in 2007. He founded and managed Microsoft Search Technology Center from 2005 to 2007 and led development of Microsoft’s search products (Bing) in Asia-Pacific. In 2014, Dr. Hon was appointed as chairman of Microsoft Asia-Pacific R&D Group.

Prior to joining Microsoft Research Asia, Dr. Hon was the founding member and architect of the Natural Interactive Services Division at Microsoft Corporation. Besides overseeing architectural and technical aspects of the award-winning Microsoft Speech Server product, Natural User Interface Platform and Microsoft Assistance Platform, he was also responsible for managing and delivering statistical learning technologies and advanced search. Dr. Hon joined Microsoft Research as a senior researcher in 1995 and has been a key contributor to Microsoft’s SAPI and speech engine technologies. He previously worked at Apple, where he led research and development for Apple’s Chinese Dictation Kit.

An IEEE Fellow and a distinguished scientist of Microsoft, Dr. Hon is an internationally recognized expert in speech technology. Dr. Hon has published more than 100 technical papers in international journals and at conferences. He co-authored a book, Spoken Language Processing, which is a graduate-level textbook and reference book in the area of speech technology used in universities around the world. Dr. Hon holds three dozen patents in several technical areas.

Dr. Hon received a PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from National Taiwan University.

Featured content

Celebrating 20 years of MSR in Asia with Dr. Hsiao-Wuen Hon

Episode 49, November 7, 2018 - In 1998, Microsoft Research opened a small lab in Beijing to expand its research efforts and draw on the immense high-tech talent pool in China. No one expected that only twenty years later, Microsoft Research Asia would become the dynamic organization it is today, with innovative research contributing to nearly every part of Microsoft’s business. Dr. Hsiao-Wuen Hon has watched it grow from the beginning and this year, celebrates the lab’s 20th anniversary as Managing Director, Corporate Vice President and Chairman of Microsoft’s Asia-Pacific R&D Group.