PeopleofSuperintelligence

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Weishung Liu

Weishung Liu is a Microsoft Research program manager who helps teams carry AI research into real-world systems. She earned degrees in industrial design and comparative religion at the University of Washington, then developed products at Disney, Fluke and SpaceX before joining Microsoft in 2020. At Microsoft Research, she helped develop Watch For, a video analytics platform for gaming highlights and content moderation, and coauthored reports on medical foundation models, Phi-3 and Phi-4. As of October 2026, she is a Principal TPM Manager on the founding team at Microsoft Research Catalyst Lab.

Timeline

  1. By 2020

    From Mickey Monsters to Starlink

    She earns dual undergraduate degrees in industrial design and comparative religion at the University of Washington. After graduation, she moves to Orlando to join Disney Theme Park Merchandise, where an idea of hers becomes the Mickey Monsters plush line; before 2020, she works at Fluke on IoT and thermal imaging and at SpaceX on Starlink.

  2. 2020

    Joining Microsoft Research

    After a stint at Bellevue startup Likewise, she joins Microsoft in 2020 to work in research. Her projects include IoT, accessibility, distributed systems, decentralized tech, sustainability, cybersecurity and large-scale AI research.

  3. December 2021

    Watch For video analytics

    In December 2021, as a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft Research in Redmond, she presents Watch For, a platform that uses deep learning, computer vision and efficient AI infrastructure to find interesting moments in video. The system supports game highlights and content moderation in products such as Xbox.

  4. November 2023

    Medprompt in medical AI

    In November 2023, she coauthors Microsoft Research's paper Can Generalist Foundation Models Outcompete Special-Purpose Tuning? Case Study in Medicine. The team introduces Medprompt, a combination of prompt strategies that improves GPT-4 on medical question-answering benchmarks.

  5. April 2024

    The Phi-3 Technical Report

    She coauthors the Phi-3 Technical Report, submitted in April 2024. It introduces phi-3-mini, a 3.8-billion-parameter language model small enough to run on a phone.

  6. May 2024

    What's Your Story podcast

    In May 2024, she joins Johannes Gehrke on the Microsoft Research podcast What's Your Story as a Principal PM Manager. She talks about her path through Disney, Fluke and SpaceX and her work to empower Microsoft Research teams to extend their reach.

  7. December 2024

    The Phi-4 Technical Report

    In December 2024, she is one of 27 authors of the Phi-4 Technical Report. It presents phi-4, a 14-billion-parameter language model trained with a recipe centered on data quality and synthetic data throughout training.

  8. As of October 2026

    Catalyst Lab founding team

    As of October 2026, she is a Principal TPM Manager at Microsoft Research Catalyst Lab and part of its founding team. She helps build and run the AI-native lab through strategy, cross-team collaboration and technical and operational foundations. Before this role, she leads Technical Program Management for Microsoft Research Americas across infrastructure and systems, foundation models, trust and security, and agentic experiences and applications.

Career

  1. NowMicrosoft ResearchSenior Program Manager

Education

  1. University of WashingtonUndergraduate degrees in industrial design and comparative religion

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 named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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

  1. Weishung Liu at Microsoft Research microsoft.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. What’s Your Story: Weishung Liu - Microsoft Research microsoft.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Weishung Liu at Microsoft Research - news and awards microsoft.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Can Generalist Foundation Models Outcompete Special-Purpose Tuning? Case Study in Medicine - Microsoft Research microsoft.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. [2404.14219] Phi-3 Technical Report: A Highly Capable Language Model Locally on Your Phone arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. What’s Your Story: Weishung Liu – TheWindowsUpdate.com thewindowsupdate.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Phi-4 Technical Report - Microsoft Research microsoft.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. [2412.08905] Phi-4 Technical Report arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Called to serve: Tech, research, and positive impact - Microsoft Research microsoft.com. Checked 21 October 2026.