Wise guy's soft touch

Showing signs of genius even as a young boy, it was perhaps not surprising that Dr Zhang Yaqin would rise to become a right-hand man of the world's most powerful billionaire.

At the tender age of 7, Zhang left his home in Taiyuan, North China's Shanxi Province, to attend school. In 1978, aged 12, he entered the University of Science and Technology of China, in East China's Anhui Province.

With a master's degree in electrical engineering under his belt by the age of 18, Zhang left for the United States.

The ensuing years saw him bestowed with a slew of other academic honors, and in 1999, he joined Microsoft, bringing with him a wealth of technical knowledge.

In 2004, Bill Gates announced the appointment of Zhang, then aged 38, as Microsoft's global vice-president.

Now leading the company's research and development group in China, Zhang and his team are driving Microsoft's bold new vision for the vast Asian market.

On April 21, Gates revealed his ambitious plans for China, with research and development parks to be built in its two biggest cities.

"We are initiating a great campus in Beijing and Shanghai that will more than double the capacity to bring great R&D people to those locations," Gates said at the Bo'ao Asia Forum, in South China's Hainan Province.

Last year, Zhang returned to China, integrating Microsoft's various research institutes here into a Beijing-based powerhouse with an annual budget of more than $100 million. The group comprised Microsoft Research Asia, Microsoft Advanced Technology Center, Microsoft China Technology Center and other research institutes in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.

China R&D Group has become Microsoft's biggest overseas research base. More than 100 innovations from teams here count among Microsoft's critical products, such as the next generation of the Microsoft Windows desktop operating system and the outlook mobile service for Office 2007.

"We had nearly 700 full-time employees last year, and the number has doubled. We have world-class scientists and talented graduates from top universities," Zhang said.

He joined the company as associate dean of Microsoft Research China, with four members. Now, with 1,400 full-time employees under him, Zhang is ready to act on his personal motto: "Chinese wisdom benefits the globe".

Like Gates, Zhang had been labeled a genius long before joining Microsoft.

He learned the value of independence and striving to be stronger than other children. Then, when he was 5 years old, his father died.

His mother, who raised him alone, encouraged him to turn his mind towards his future career. Even now, Zhang often asks himself what it is that distinguishes him from others.

Zhang owes much of his success to a deep-seated thirst for knowledge. As an eager freshman, he once squeezed his way to the front row of Stephen Hawking's 1985 lecture on black holes.

On another occasion, he sat through hours of a Japanese speech, hoping - albeit in vain - to glean at least something from the talk.

On choosing his major, Zhang was again inspired by a speech and moved into the fields of wireless, mobile communications, networking, digital videos and multimedia technology instead of mathematics.

After he got his master's degree in electrical engineering at the age of 18, a deeper desire for the unknown took him to the United States. He enrolled in George Washington University as an electrical engineering major in 1985.

However, when Zhang arrived in September, he was totally at a loss. Nobody picked him up from the airport and his pre-enrollment record didn't seem to exist.

Zhang had to spend his first weekend in this new world with a kind-hearted overseas Chinese family. He later learned that the university had planned him to enroll in the next semester. But the letter didn't arrive in time.

However, the 19-year-old Zhang took his fate into his own hands. Early in the morning on the third day of his arrival, he found his way to the International Services office of the university, which was several blocks away form the main campus. He convinced the staff that he already had the language skills necessary for his PhD courses. He was enrolled immediately, circumventing the language-course requirements.

Raymond Pickholtz, Zhang's teacher and professor emeritus of engineering, had taught electrical engineering and computer science at George Washington University for more than 30 years before his retirement in 2004.

However, Zhang once kept Professor Pickholtz waiting for four hours. He encountered a procession on the way to meet the professor and learned that it was comprised of activists protesting against the US invasion of Panama. The young man joined the parade, because, "they were reasonable in my mind".

Zhang participated in Pickholtz's research projects before he was recommended to GTE Laboratories Inc. Zhang was nominated as the youngest Fellow of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) at the age of 31 because of his achievements in GTE laboratories. IEEE is the world's leading nonprofit professional association for the advancement of technology and has more than 365,000 members in more than 150 countries and regions.

Zhang was the youngest Chinese to join the IEEE. "I was lucky, because I met a good teacher who guided my PhD study to be well organized; I was lucky that I could concentrate on the five years of hard research in GTE without distractions."

But more importantly, Zhang believes that his achievements come from the fast growth of the industry, which wields great potential in the areas of Internet and mobile communications.

Gates, both a colleague and a friend, has influenced him greatly, Zhang said. After joining Microsoft Research Asia as its chief scientist in 1999, he was promoted to the post of chairman in July of 2000.

There had been more than 100 new technologies transferred to core products of Microsoft during the four years before he was promoted as Microsoft's vice-president in 2004. During this time, Zhang established the Microsoft Advanced Technology Center (ATC) in Beijing with current ATC chairman Zhang Hongjiang.

In 2004, Zhang was promoted as vice president of Microsoft in Microsoft's US headquarters to take charge of research of mobile communication and global development affairs of its embedded system - an artificial system providing interactive functions for electronic products, such as PDAs, digital TVs, the Internet and elevators. It became more feasible for him to knock on Bill's gate and provided Zhang more chances to get to know him better.

"Besides his exceedingly high IQ, Bill impressed me much on his business acumen," he said. "Bill can be very technical in front of technicians, can be product architectural when talking with product staff and can also be profound when talking on the level of the whole industry. He integrates them cohesively with his unique capability."

As Gates said in Bo'ao Asia Forum this April, more than 60 percent of Microsoft R&D's base will migrate to Asia because of the continent's increasing importance to the company's operation, which is largely grounded in the size of its population.

China, in particular, is rising as one of the most important places in the world. "I feel so good for me to be back here to exert my influence on such a stage and contribute to global technology and better people's lives. I enjoy the role of being the captain of the big ship of Microsoft China R&D Group," Zhang said.

As the fastest growing research base of Microsoft outside the United States, Microsoft China R&D Group plans to recruit 600 new research staffers and more than 110 interns from universities over the next year.

(China Daily 07/05/2007 page20)