Kai-Fu Lee
Encyclopedia
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...
executive and a computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
researcher.
He became the focus of a 2005 legal dispute between Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
and Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
, his former employer, due to a one-year non-compete agreement that he signed with Microsoft in 2000 when he became its corporate vice president of interactive services.
He is one of the most prominent figures in the Chinese internet sector. He was the founding president of Google China
Google China
Google China is a subsidiary of Google, Inc., the world's largest Internet search engine company. Google China ranks as the number 2 search engine in the People's Republic of China, after Baidu...
, serving from July, 2005 through September 4, 2009. His personal blog is widely followed in China and he runs a popular website to help young Chinese people achieve studies and careers.
Background
Lee was born in Taipei, Taiwan, the son of Tien-Min Li, a legislator and historian from SichuanSichuan
' , known formerly in the West by its postal map spellings of Szechwan or Szechuan is a province in Southwest China with its capital in Chengdu...
, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
.
Lee has detailed his personal life and career history in his autobiography, Making a World of Difference, published in October 2011 and currently unavailable on Amazon.com.
Education
In 1973, Lee immigrated to the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and attended high school in Oak Ridge
Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Oak Ridge is a city in Anderson and Roane counties in the eastern part of the U.S. state of Tennessee, about west of Knoxville. Oak Ridge's population was 27,387 at the 2000 census...
, Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
. He graduated summa cum laude from Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, earning a B.S. degree in computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
in 1983. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....
in 1988.
Academic research
At Carnegie Mellon, Lee worked on topics in machine learning and pattern recognition. In 1986, he and Sanjoy Mahajan developed Bill, a Bayesian learning-based system for playing the board game OthelloReversi
Reversi is a board game involving abstract strategy and played by two players on a board with 8 rows and 8 columns and a set of distinct pieces for each side. Pieces typically are disks with a light and a dark face, each face belonging to one player...
that won the US national tournament of computer players in 1989. In 1988, he completed his doctoral dissertation on Sphinx, the first large-vocabulary, speaker-independent, continuous speech recognition system.
Lee has written two books on speech recognition
Speech recognition
Speech recognition converts spoken words to text. The term "voice recognition" is sometimes used to refer to recognition systems that must be trained to a particular speaker—as is the case for most desktop recognition software...
and more than 60 papers in computer science. His doctoral dissertation was published in 1988 as a Kluwer monograph, Automatic Speech Recognition: The Development of the Sphinx Recognition System (ISBN 0898382963). Together with Alex Waibel
Alex Waibel
Alex Waibel is a professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, and is the director of interACT, the International Center for Advanced Communication Technologies. Waibel's research interests focus on speech recognition and translation, and human...
, another Carnegie Mellon researcher, Lee edited Readings in Speech Recognition (1990, ISBN 1558601244).
Apple, SGI, and Microsoft
After two years as a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon, Lee joined Apple ComputerApple Computer
Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
in 1990 as a research and development executive. While at Apple (1990–1996), he headed R&D groups that developed Apple Bandai Pippin , PlainTalk
PlainTalk
PlainTalk is the collective name for several speech synthesis and speech recognition technologies developed by Apple Inc.In 1990, Apple invested a lot of work and money in speech recognition technology, hiring many respected researchers in the field. The result was "PlainTalk", released with the...
, Casper (speech interface), GalaTea (text to speech system) for Mac Computers .
Lee moved to Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics, Inc. was a manufacturer of high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and software, founded in 1981 by Jim Clark...
in 1996 and spent a year as president of their VRML
VRML
VRML is a standard file format for representing 3-dimensional interactive vector graphics, designed particularly with the World Wide Web in mind...
division, Cosmo Software.
In 1998, Lee moved to Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
and went to Beijing
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
where he played a key role in establishing the Microsoft Research
Microsoft Research
Microsoft Research is the research division of Microsoft created in 1991 for developing various computer science ideas and integrating them into Microsoft products. It currently employs Turing Award winners C.A.R. Hoare, Butler Lampson, and Charles P...
division there. MSR China later became known as MSR Asia. Lee returned to the United States in 2000 and was vice president of interactive services at Microsoft from 2000 to 2005.
Move from Microsoft to Google
In July, 2005, Lee left Microsoft to take a position at GoogleGoogle
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
.
On July 19, 2005, Microsoft sued Google and Lee in a Washington state court over Google's hiring of its former Vice President of Interactive Services, claiming that Lee was violating his non-compete agreement by working for Google within one year of leaving the Redmond-based software corporation. Microsoft argued that Lee would inevitably disclose
Inevitable disclosure
Inevitable disclosure is a legal doctrine through which an employer can use trade secret law to enjoin a former employee from working in a job that would inevitably result in the use of trade secrets.- External links :* by Ivan Hoffman...
proprietary information
Trade secret
A trade secret is a formula, practice, process, design, instrument, pattern, or compilation of information which is not generally known or reasonably ascertainable, by which a business can obtain an economic advantage over competitors or customers...
to Google if he was allowed to work there.
On July 28, 2005, Washington state Superior Court Judge Steven González granted Microsoft a temporary restraining order, which prohibited Lee from working on Google projects that compete with Microsoft pending a trial scheduled for January 9, 2006. On September 13, following a hearing, Judge González issued a ruling permitting Lee to work for Google, but barring him from starting work on some technical projects until the case goes to trial in January 2006. Lee was still allowed to recruit employees for Google in China and to talk to government officials about licensing, but was prohibited from working on technologies such as search or speech
Speech recognition
Speech recognition converts spoken words to text. The term "voice recognition" is sometimes used to refer to recognition systems that must be trained to a particular speaker—as is the case for most desktop recognition software...
. Lee was also prohibited from setting budgets, salaries, and research directions for Google in China until the case was to go to trial in January 2006.
Before the case could go to trial, on December 22, 2005 Google and Microsoft announced that they had reached a settlement whose terms are confidential, ending a five-month dispute between the two companies.
At Google China
Google China
Google China is a subsidiary of Google, Inc., the world's largest Internet search engine company. Google China ranks as the number 2 search engine in the People's Republic of China, after Baidu...
, Lee helped establish the company in the market and overseen its growth in the country. He was responsible for launching the Google.cn regional website, and strengthened the company's team of engineers and scientists in the country.
On 4 September 2009, Lee announced his resignation from Google. He said “With a very strong leadership team in place, it seemed a very good moment for me to move to the next chapter in my career.” Alan Eustace, senior Google vice-president for engineering, credited him with "helping dramatically to improve the quality and range of services that we offer in China, and ensuring that we continue to innovate on the Web for the benefit of users and advertisers". Two executives in the company have taken over Lee's roles, Boon-Lock Yeo, who is now working as director of Google’s Shanghai engineering office, will take over the engineering department, and John Liu, VP of sales and operations, will assume the business and operations side.
Innovation Works
On September 7, 2009 he announced details of a $115m venture capitalVenture capital
Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...
(early-stage incubation and seed money business model) fund called "Innovation Works" that aims to create five successful Chinese start-up
Startup company
A startup company or startup is a company with a limited operating history. These companies, generally newly created, are in a phase of development and research for markets...
s a year in internet and mobile internet businesses or in vast hosting services known as cloud computing
Cloud computing
Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility over a network ....
. The Innovation Works fund has attracted several investors, including Steve Chen
Steve Chen (YouTube)
Steven Shih "Steve" Chen is a Chinese Taiwanese American and a co-founder and previous Chief Technology Officer of the popular video sharing website YouTube.- Early years and education :...
, co-founder of YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
; Foxconn
Foxconn
The Foxconn Technology Group is a multinational business group anchored by the Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd. , a Taiwan-registered corporation headquartered in Tucheng, Taiwan...
, the electronics contract manufacturer; Legend Holdings
Legend Holdings
Legend Holdings Limited is Chinese investment holdings company in IT, investment, and real estate formed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences - the best-known of which is the Lenovo Group in which Legend is the controlling shareholder.Legend Holdings Limited (Chinese: Lianxiang) is Chinese...
, the parent of PC maker Lenovo; and WI Harper Group.
In September 2010, Lee described two Google Android projects for Chinese users: Tapas, a smart-phone operating system tailored for Chinese users and Wonderpod (Wandoujia), which allows downloading from Chinese video sites.
Previous jobs
- Vice President, GoogleGoogleGoogle Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
. July, 2005 - 4 September 2009 - Corporate Vice President, Natural Interactive Services Division (NISD), Microsoft Corp. 2000 - July, 2005
- Founder & Managing Director, Microsoft Research AsiaMicrosoft Research AsiaMicrosoft Research Asia, Microsoft’s fundamental research arm in the Asia Pacific region, was founded on November 5, 1998. In 2004, Technology Review named Microsoft Research Asia “the hottest computer lab in the world”....
, China, 1998–2000 - President, Cosmo Software
- President, Multimedia Software Business Unit, Silicon GraphicsSilicon GraphicsSilicon Graphics, Inc. was a manufacturer of high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and software, founded in 1981 by Jim Clark...
Inc. (SGI) - Vice President & General Manager, Web Products, Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI)
- Vice President, Interactive Media Group, Apple ComputerApple ComputerApple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
- Manager, Speech & Language Technologies Group, Apple ComputerApple ComputerApple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
- Principal Speech Scientist, Apple ComputerApple ComputerApple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad...
, 1990 - 1993 - Research Computer Scientist, Carnegie Mellon UniversityCarnegie Mellon UniversityCarnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....
, 1988–1990
Education
- Ph.D.Ph.D.A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
in Computer ScienceComputer scienceComputer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
, Carnegie Mellon UniversityCarnegie Mellon UniversityCarnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....
, 1988 - B.S. in Computer ScienceComputer scienceComputer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
, Columbia UniversityColumbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, 1983
Membership
- Fellow, IEEE (inducted 2002)
- Member, Committee of 100Committee of 100 (United States)The Committee of 100 is a group of prominent Chinese Americans with the mission to "pool their strengths and experience to address important issues concerning the Chinese American community, as well as issues affecting Sino-American relations." It was founded in 1990.The declared key functions of...
External links
- Innovation Works
- Kai-Fu Lee's Student Network (www.kaifulee.com)
- Kai-Fu Lee's lecture at Carnegie Mellon University
- Kai-Fu Lee on NewsHour, mentions the Great Firewall
- Making a World of Difference, Kai-Fu Lee's official autobiography (English)