Haiyan Zhang
- Innovation Director
Haiyan Zhang is Innovation Director at Microsoft Research, Cambridge, creating cutting-edge technology to enable innovative new experiences in play and wellness. She is also an inventor appearing on the BBC documentary, Big Life Fix.
Haiyan was formerly Innovation Director at Xbox Studios, and Co-Founder & Design Lead for the innovation platform, OpenIDEO. At the design consultancy, IDEO, Haiyan created innovative tech experiences for community building, entertainment and financial services and worked with leading video game makers on research and ideas for new play experiences.
Haiyan’s work is informed by her background as a software engineer and user interface designer creating applications for the biomedical and data-mining industries. As part of a team of software developers from Excel Tech in Canada, she created an electroencephalograph (EEG) visualisation tool for intra-operative monitoring, which is currently being used in hospitals across North America.