Dr. Yousef Khalidi

Dr. Yousef Khalidi is Corporate VP of Azure for Operators at Microsoft. He is responsible for engineering, strategy, and partnerships to bring the power of Azure cloud to the telecommunications industry. He is a member of the team that conceived and built Microsoft Azure which is a global cloud computing system and is one of the biggest in the world. He has served in several engineering, product management, operational, and architectural roles in Azure over the years.

Prior to joining Microsoft, Khalidi spent 14 years at Sun Microsystems where he was a Distinguished Engineer. At Sun, he held several R&D, architecture, and management positions in systems software, including CTO and Chief Architect of Solaris, Chief Architect of Sun’s N1 utility computing platform, Chief Architect and Director of the Sun Cluster product line, and as a principal architect of the Solaris MC and the Spring advanced development projects. Early in his career he focused on operating systems and the boundary between the OS and hardware, including novel designs in memory management hardware and high-speed networking. Khalidi also served as a member of Sun’s Technical Advisory Council.

Khalidi is a member of Georgia Tech President’s Advisory Board, QCRI’s Scientific Advisory Committee, WVU Lane Department of CSEE Academy of Distinguished Alumni, and Georgia Tech College of Computing Hall of Fame. He previously served on the Georgia Tech College of Computing Advisory Board. He holds over 50 patents in distributed systems, networking, object-oriented systems, and computer hardware. Yousef Khalidi earned his bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from West Virginia University where he graduated summa cum laude. He earned his MS and PhD in Information and Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), with a minor in Performance Evaluation and Statistics.