Jaime Teevan facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Jaime Teevan
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Teevan speaking at the AEA Conference in 2025
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| Born | 1976 (age 48–49) |
| Education | Yale University (BS) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD) |
| Awards | TR35 (2009) Borg Early Career Award (2014) Karen Spärck Jones Award (2016) ACM Fellow (2022) SIGIR Academy (2022) CHI Academy (2022) TIME 100 AI (2023) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer science Human-Computer Interaction Information Retrieval |
| Institutions | Microsoft Research |
| Doctoral advisor | David Karger |
Jaime Teevan, born in 1976, is an American computer scientist. She is a top executive at Microsoft. She is well-known for her work with AI and making people more productive.
Her School Days
Jaime Teevan studied Computer Science at Yale University. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree there.
While still a student, she created a special project for her final year. This project showed a new way to use how websites link together. It helped people find information better online. An early search engine called Infoseek bought her idea.
She also earned two advanced degrees, a Ph.D. and an S.M., from MIT. At MIT, she helped start a new area of study. This field is called Personal Information Management. It focuses on how people organize and use their own information.
Her Career at Microsoft
Teevan worked for many years as a researcher at Microsoft Research. There, she studied how people use computers. She also looked at how to find information and how people work together using computers. Her goal was to help people find, manage, and use information better. This was especially important when they had little time or worked with others.
From 2017 to 2018, Teevan was a special advisor to Microsoft's CEO, Satya Nadella. She was the first technical advisor to him with a background in AI.
Today, she is Microsoft's Chief Scientist. She also became a Microsoft Technical Fellow in 2022. Microsoft has been focusing a lot on products that use AI. Jaime has been a key person in leading this change. Business Insider magazine has called her "the brains behind Microsoft's productivity innovations."
After the COVID-19 pandemic, Teevan led Microsoft's Future of Work project. This project brought together researchers from Microsoft, LinkedIn, and GitHub. They studied how the pandemic changed the way people work. This research led to new features in Microsoft products. For example, they improved technology for meetings where some people are in the office and some are working from home.
Starting in late 2022, Teevan led the early work on M365 Copilot. This project aimed to put the newest AI into Microsoft's main products. She focused on smoothly adding AI into tools like Word, Excel, and Teams. She spoke about her experience bringing generative AI to Microsoft products. This was in an interview with Reid Hoffman on the day M365 Copilot launched. She also helped announce M365 Copilot. She talked about the "art and science" behind it.
Her Research and Awards
Teevan has written over 100 papers for international conferences and journals. She has won many awards for her papers. Much of her work is about finding information, how people use computers, and the future of work. She helped write the first book on finding information together. She also edited a book on Personal Information Management (PIM).
Teevan is especially known for her work on personalized search. This means making search results fit what each person knows and likes. According to Technology Review, Teevan "is a leader in using data about people's knowledge, preferences, and habits to help them manage information."
Teevan also works on 'microproductivity.' This is about breaking down big tasks into many small ones. These small tasks can be done more easily and quickly. She created the idea of selfsourcing. This is when the person who owns the task does these small parts themselves. A 2017 article in the New York Magazine quoted her saying, "I could probably pretty easily find an extra hour in my day at work, just in these little micro-moments of time when I’m not being productive."
Teevan was named a Technology Review (TR35) 2009 Young Innovator. This was for her research on personalized search. In 2014, she received the CRA-W Borg Early Career Award (BECA). In 2016, she received the Karen Spärck Jones award from the British Computer Society. This was for her "creative contributions to the intersection of information retrieval, user experience and social media."
In 2022, she became a Microsoft Technical Fellow. She was also named an ACM Fellow for her work in human-computer interaction, information retrieval, and productivity. In the same year, she joined the SIGCHI and SIGIR Academies. In 2023, she was on TIME's first list of the 100 most important people in artificial intelligence.
Teevan also serves on the board of the Computing Research Association (CRA). In 2025, she was chosen to be an alumni fellow on the board of the Yale Corporation. This is Yale University’s main governing body.
Her Family Life
Jaime Teevan is married to Alexander Hehmeyer. They live in Bellevue, Washington. They have four children. Teevan supports helping researchers balance being a parent with their academic work.
