Daniel T. Ling
Corporate Vice President
Microsoft Research
Redmond, WA, USA

BIOGRAPHY

Dan Ling received his BS (’74), MS (’75) and PhD (’80) in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.  Dan currently serves as Corporate Vice President at Microsoft.  From July 1995 until March 2007 he served as the director of the main Microsoft Research laboratory in Redmond, WA.   He has since transitioned to a part-time role on special assignment.  Dan joined Microsoft in 1992 to help found a new corporate research laboratory focused on computer science.  When he arrived, Microsoft Research consisted of fewer than half a dozen staff in Redmond.  Since that time Microsoft Research has grown to over 800 staff in five laboratories around the world.   Dan has played a key role in the transformation of Microsoft Research into a leading corporate research lab that has made key contributions to the field of computer science as well as to many Microsoft products and services.  In addition to leading the Redmond laboratory he also helped to found the laboratories in Beijing and Bangalore.

Prior to joining Microsoft, Dan was at the IBM Thomas J. Watson research center where he served in multiple roles.  His early research work resulted in the co-invention of the dual ported video memory which enabled inexpensive high performance frame buffers.  He subsequently managed research projects in computer aided design and computer organization that contributed to the first commercial IBM RISC processor, the PowerPC chip.   He also led research efforts in virtual reality, HCI and data visualization.

Dan has served on advisory committees to the School of Engineering at Stanford, UC Berkeley and the University of Washington as well as for the Directorate of Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the National Science Foundation and the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board at the National Academies.

STATEMENT

The ACM has been a vital organization to the field of computer science over the past 60 years.  Today the ACM is more important to our field than ever organizing outstanding conferences and publications, pioneering the digital library, serving as a gathering place through the SIGs, and being an important voice for our community.  However our field faces a number of challenges where ACM can help.  While the technical advances of information technology and its contribution to both society and the world economy have been breathtaking, many students today are turning away from the discipline.  The ACM needs to help clearly articulate the excitement of the field and reach out beyond colleges and universities to high schools so that younger students continue to enter the field.  Similarly the ACM needs to strengthen its efforts to increase the diversity of people in the profession via initiatives such as ACM-W and CDC.

Much of the excitement today is working across disciplines not only within the field of computer science but understanding how the principles and ideas of computer science can influence other scientific fields.  I believe students are particularly excited about addressing major issues facing our society such as climate change, sustainable development and global health.  Computer science can play an important role not simply by providing technology but through what Jeannette Wing has called “computational thinking”.   The ACM can be a strong voice demonstrating these exciting opportunities.

Finally, it is important for ACM to be widely inclusive of our community; to broaden its international perspective through stronger international chapters, to provide additional value to the practitioner, and to be meaningful to new professionals just starting their careers.