Chris White的肖像

Chris White

General Manager

关于

Chris White is Partner and Managing Director, Special Projects (opens in new tab). He leads research teams with world-class specialists solving highly uncertain, complex problems. His group builds technologies to benefit society, including tools for digital safety, plurality, and evidence-based policy.

Prior to Microsoft, Chris was a Program Manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where he created and managed DARPA’s leading programs XDATA, Memex, and invested hundreds of millions of dollars into open-source software. He was also DARPA’s country lead in Afghanistan, leading multinational field deployments of advanced technology. He has worked with hundreds of principal investigators and faculty across many academic and technical disciplines. His work has been applied to countering human trafficking, financial fraud, and terrorism. In recognition of this work, Chris received the 2016 Presidential Award for Extraordinary Efforts to Combat Trafficking in Persons, the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service, the Department of Defense Joint Meritorious Unit Award, and a Department of Treasury Intelligence and Analysis Medallion for combatting terrorism financing.

Prior to DARPA, Chris was a fellow at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He was a Department of Homeland Security Graduate Fellow and earned a PhD from Johns Hopkins University in electrical and computer engineering, where his research focused on AI, machine learning, statistical methods for large data sets, and human language technology. He earned a BS from Oklahoma State University.

He lives near Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife and two daughters.

Chris’s work has been featured in media outlets including Popular Science, CBS’s 60 Minutes, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone Magazine, TEDx, and Google’s Solve for X. For more detail about Chris’s background, listen to a Podcast (opens in new tab) on democratizing data science, or read about a Presidential Award (opens in new tab) to combat human trafficking, chief data officer activity during wartime (opens in new tab), or a special genius issue profile by Popular Science (opens in new tab).

His group’s work at Microsoft Research has included study, software engineering, and system development for nascent industry and societal areas, including:

Sociotechnical research

Sustainability research

Security research

New industries research