Dr. John Breese

Dr. John (Jack) Breese is an active angel investor in the Seattle area and serves as an advisor and board member for a variety of local start-up companies, including Marketfish, Atlas Accelerator, Metajure, and Digital Scirocco. He is a member of the Advisory Group at Huron Consulting and serves on the Washington State Economic Development Commission.

From 1998 to 2005 he was a Director of Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington, where he supervised work on research in intelligent systems including data management, machine learning, natural language processing, community technologies, adaptive systems, and user interfaces. His responsibilities included facilitation of Microsoft Research technology transfer efforts, coordination with Microsoft’s overseas research labs, and various activities related to university relations, intellectual property management, and customer interaction. Dr. Breese has numerous publications and patents in the fields of decision analysis, data mining, electronic commerce, and artificial intelligence. Before joining Microsoft, he was a research scientist at the Rockwell Science Center Palo Alto Lab and a founder of Knowledge Industries Inc., a Palo Alto start-up. Dr. Breese also led  major projects in the Middle East assisting Saudi Aramco in the formation of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) from 2006 through the university inauguration in 2009.

Dr. Breese received a doctorate from the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems (now Management Science and Engineering) at Stanford University in 1987. He has a Master’s Degree in Public Policy Studies from the University of Michigan (1979) and a B.A. in Mathematics from Clark University (1977).