Lily Sun

About

Lily Sun is a Senior Research Program Manager at Microsoft Research Asia with 10-year professional experiences in talent cultivation, research collaboration, university relations, and program management.

Aa a veteran in the Outreach group, Lily Sun has made fundamental contributions in the past decade to Microsoft Research Asia as the owner of the highly recognized talent programs. She and her talent team members focus on developing the overall strategy, plan, as well as the new initiatives to attract, foster and retain high-quality, diverse talents for Microsoft Research Asia, through a portfolio of brand programs including Stars of Tomorrow Internship, Joint PhD Program, Pre-PhD program, StarLeap Program, StarBridge Program, PhD forums, etc.

Lily Sun takes responsibility for MSR Asia’s research engagement under several themes. She is one of the founding members of MSR Asia Theory Center (opens in new tab). Besides, she currently oversees the research collaboration in AI for Education and AI for Ancient Texts.  She currently oversees collaboration with several top-notch universities/institutions in Beijing and Shanghai, including Peking University, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Renmin University of China, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Fudan University, ShanghaiTech University, etc. And she has been responsible for universities in Middle China and Tianjin for several years.

Lily Sun is an enthusiastic advocate for Diversity and Inclusion, focusing on Women in Tech. She founded Microsoft Ada Workshops (opens in new tab) in 2016 and has driven the joint efforts from academia and industry to empower next-gen female talents over the years. She has been serving as one of the executive members of the Women Branch of China Computer Federation (opens in new tab) and Women at Microsoft Greater China Region, since 2020 and 2021, respectively.

Lily Sun received her M.S. degree of Engineering and B.S. degree of Science from Peking University.