Qi Lu

Who is Qi Lu?

Lu Qi, more commonly known as Qi Lu in English, is currently Executive Vice President at Microsoft, leading the company's work on the Bing search engine, Skype and Microsoft Office. Lu formerly worked as technology developer and manager for Yahoo!'s technology search division.

Lu studied at Fudan University in Shanghai, China. After attending a talk by Carnegie Mellon professor Edmund M. Clarke, Lu was invited to apply for a PhD at Carnegie Mellon. Clarke even offered to waive the $45 application fee that Lu says he could never have come up with. In 1996, Lu graduated with a PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon.

Lu worked in one of IBM's research labs from 1996-98, then joined Yahoo! and eventually rose to manage 3,000 engineers and the development of search and search advertising technologies for the company. Lu's departure from Yahoo! in mid-2008 was long-planned, and he was contemplating opportunities in venture capital and even thinking of returning to China. However, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer personally recruited him to join the software giant. After joining Microsoft, Lu was instrumental in driving the partnership with Yahoo! in search and the launch of Bing.