Dr. Hansong Zhang is a scientist, entrepreneur, and investor based in Silicon Valley. He has helped build two prominent U.S. game companies. He was Chief Scientist at Niantic, maker of the blockbuster AR game Pokemon Go, where he led technology initiatives in Augmented Reality (AR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). He was the founding Vice President of Technology at Roblox Corporation, which became the world’s largest platform for user-created games and went public on the NYSE in 2021. Hansong was a co-founder of Wearality Corp, an AR company spun off from Lockheed Martin to focus on the consumer space. His own consulting firm advised on emerging Visual Computing and AI technologies at some of the largest technology companies in the world, including Google, Microsoft, Intel, and AMD. In his early years in the Valley, he served technical leadership roles at Silicon Graphics and nVidia. At his first startup, Hansong architected a graphics engine that, through acquisition, powered Google Earth. Beyond science and technology, Hansong is a Zen Buddhist and art collector with a strong interest in philosophy and history. He is the first Trustee, and Commissioner, from Mainland China at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum. As a Guest Professor at China Academy of Art, he teaches Generative Digital Art at its International Graduate School. He is also a Ph.D. Advisor at Shanghai Academy of Fine Art. He has collaborated with artists and exhibited large scale, interactive art pieces at top venues in China (including Art Gallery of China Academy of Art in Hangzhou and Long Museum in Shanghai), Citi Field in NYC, and Ackland Art Museum in Chapel Hill. Dr. Hansong Zhang holds a Ph.D. in Computer Graphics from UNC-Chapel Hill, where he researched in computer graphics, and a Master’s degree from the Institute of Computing Technology, China Academy of Sciences.
