Dr. Tan combines a deep research and academic background ​with two decades of software engineering experience in some ​of the most high profile and influential technology companies ​of this century.vHis expertise is on distributed systems, ​operating systems, computer networking, and visualization.

Dr. Tan received his bachelors from the University of ​California at Berkeley in Electrical Engineering and Computer ​Science, and then received his Masters and PhD in Computer ​Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. ​Dr. Tan was a Googler-In-Residence instructor at Tennessee ​State University and an Adjunct Visiting Associate Professor at ​the Singapore University of Technology and Design. He is ​currently on the faculty at Western Washington University.

He founded two early Internet video streaming startups, one ​of which was acquired successfully.

He has held senior management positions at Apple in ​QuickTime, Microsoft in Windows Media and Windows ​Networking, Amazon in Amazon Prime Video, and Google in ​Google Maps. This industry experience translates to a strong ​understanding of what it means to create highly scalable and ​reliable software systems that also have the most delightful ​user experience.