Desney Tan

Who is Desney Tan?

Desney Tan is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, where he manages the Computation User Experiences group in Redmond, Washington, as well as the Human-Computer Interaction group in Beijing, China. He also holds an affiliate faculty appointment in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington.

Tan was recipient of a National Science and Technology Board Fellowship in 2001, an Agency for Science, Technology, and Research Fellowship in 2002, and a Microsoft Research Fellowship in 2003. He was honored as one of MIT Technology Review's 2007 Young Innovators Under 35 in 2007 for his work on Brain Computer Interfaces. He was also named one of SciFi Channel's Young Visionaries at TED 2009, as well as Forbes' Revolutionaries: Radical Thinkers and their World-Changing Ideas for his work on Whole Body Computing. He was the Technical Program Chair of the prestigious ACM SIGCHI Conference in 2008 and General Chair in 2011. His research interests primarily focus on Human-Computer Interaction, Physiological Computing, and Healthcare.