PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Chengmin Chi

Chengmin Chi is a Microsoft Applied Scientist whose research includes neural document retrieval. He studied at Beihang University, pursued a master's degree in computer application at the Ministry of Information Industry's 6th research institution, and held software and engineering roles at Client Server, Sihitech, IBM, IBM Research and VMware before joining Microsoft in 2018. In 2022, he coauthored A Neural Corpus Indexer for Document Retrieval, which generated relevant document identifiers for queries and reported relative gains of 21.4% in Recall@1 on NQ320k and 16.8% in R-Precision on TriviaQA over the best baseline; the paper received a NeurIPS Outstanding Paper Award.

Now at
Microsoft

Timeline

  1. 1994–1998

    Undergraduate at Beihang

    At Beihang University, he studies as an undergraduate from 1994 to 1998.

  2. 1998–2001

    Master's in computer application

    From 1998 to 2001, he studies computer application for a master's degree at the Ministry of Information Industry's 6th research institution.

  3. 2001–2003

    Software developer at Client Server

    At Client Server, he works as a software developer from 2001 to 2003.

  4. 2003–2004

    Software developer at Sihitech

    At Sihitech, he works as a software developer from 2003 to 2004.

  5. 2004–2015

    IBM Advisory Software Engineer

    At IBM, he works as an Advisory Software Engineer and Tech Lead from 2004 to 2015. From 2004 to 2013, he works as an Advisory Software Engineer at IBM Research's Thomas J. Watson Research Center.

  6. 2013–2018

    Senior MTS at VMware

    He joins VMware as a Senior MTS in 2013 and holds the title Senior Member of Technical Staff from 2015 to 2018.

  7. 2022

    A Neural Corpus Indexer

    In 2022, he coauthors A Neural Corpus Indexer for Document Retrieval, a sequence-to-sequence network that generates relevant document identifiers directly for a designated query. The paper reports relative gains of 21.4% in Recall@1 on NQ320k and 16.8% in R-Precision on TriviaQA over the best baseline. NeurIPS names it an Outstanding Paper.

  8. Since 2018

    Applied Scientist at Microsoft

    He joins Microsoft as an Applied Scientist in 2018 and holds that role as of October 2026.

Career

  1. Since 2018MicrosoftApplied Scientist
  2. 2013–2018VMwareSenior MTS
  3. 2004–2015IBMAdvisory Software Engineer and Tech Lead
  4. 2004–2013IBM ResearchAdvisory Software Engineer and Tech Lead
  5. 2003–2004SihitechSoftware Developer
  6. 2001–2003Client ServerSoftware Developer

Education

  1. 2001Ministry of Information IndustryMaster's degree in computer application
  2. 1998Beihang UniversityUndergraduate

From the biography.

  1. Among employers with 30+ full-time cases, OpenAI leads primary technical role H-1B pay at $310,000, and Amazon, Google and Microsoft file 57% of all casesIncludes Microsoft. Across 440,669 certified US H-1B filings from 44 employers (FY2020–FY2026), OpenAI leads primary technical role base pay at $310,000 and xAI leads overall base pay at $290,000.
  2. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Includes Microsoft. Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI each year from 1955 to 2025, tracing the shift from university labs to companies.
  3. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Microsoft. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  4. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Microsoft. We estimate that Google holds the highest combined h-index at 8,016, while universities account for 73% of the deduplicated total across AI organizations.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Chengmin Chi yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Chengmin Chi (Microsoft) — Lacuna lacuna.tiptreesystems.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  2. NeurIPS 2022 - Microsoft Research microsoft.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  3. NeurIPS 2022 Awards neurips.cc. Checked 22 October 2026.
  4. A Neural Corpus Indexer for Document Retrieval proceedings.neurips.cc. Checked 22 October 2026.
  5. A Neural Corpus Indexer for Document Retrieval arxiv.org. Checked 22 October 2026.