Peter Lee was born on November 30, 1960. He is an American computer scientist who currently serves as President and head of Microsoft Research. Before this role, he led a division focused on advancing technology at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and was chair of the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University. His research focuses on improving the security and reliability of software.

Lee earned his PhD from the University of Michigan in May 1987. His doctoral thesis was titled The automatic generation of realistic compilers from high-level semantic descriptions. He is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery.

Career

Microsoft Research was created in 1991. Peter Lee, a long-time member of Microsoft Research, became the leader of the organization in 2013. In 2014, the organization employed 1,100 researchers who worked in 55 fields of study across 12 labs in different countries. From 2015 to 2020, Lee led Microsoft Research NExT (New Experiences and Technologies) and Microsoft Healthcare. Since 2020, he has managed combined efforts in MSR Labs, AI, NExT, Healthcare, and other projects. In 2024, Lee was named to Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in health for his work to improve medical records by using AI to summarize patient visits.