Dr. Tony Xu Han founded WeRide and currently serves as its Chairman of Board, Executive Director, and Chief Executive Officer. Prior to founding the company, Dr. Han worked as an associate professor of the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department at the University of Missouri from 2007 to 2017, and was granted tenure in 2013. In his academic career, he specialized in computer vison and machine learning. He worked as the Chief Scientist of autonomous driving unit at Baidu Inc. (Nasdaq: BIDU and HKEX: 9888) from 2014 to 2017. Dr. Han received his bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Beijing Jiaotong University in 1998, master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Rhode Island in 2002, and Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2008.
Dr. Yan Li co-founded WeRide and currently serves as its Executive Director and Chief Technology Officer. Prior to co-founding WeRide, Dr. Li served as the Director of Engineering of UCAR Technology Inc. from 2015 to 2017, leading the autonomous driving department and connected vehicle data platform. From 2012 to 2015, he worked as a Senior Engineer at Facebook (currently known as Meta Platforms, Inc.), where he was responsible for developing machine learning algorithms for user growth and ads.. From 1999 to 2002 and 2009 to 2012, Dr. Li worked as an applied researcher at Microsoft Corporation. Dr. Li received his bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Tsinghua University in 1997, master’s degree in Computer Science from Tsinghua University in 1999 and Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in the United States in 2009.
Dr. Hua Zhong has served as WeRide’s Senior Vice President since its inception. Prior to joining WeRide, Dr. Zhong was a Principal Engineer at Ucar Inc. Prior to that, Dr. Zhong worked at Google as well as Siemens. Dr. Zhong previously worked at Microsoft Research Asia, where he was mainly responsible for computer vision and machine learning research and development. Dr. Zhong received his bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Tsinghua University in 2000, and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in the United States in 2008.
Ms. Jennifer Xuan Li joined WeRide in 2020, and currently serves as its Chief Financial Officer and Head of International.. Prior to joining WeRide, Ms. Li served as the Investment Director of SenseTime Group Inc. (HKEX: 0020) from 2018 to 2020, where she was responsible for capital raising and strategic investments in high-tech sectors. From 2015 to 2018, Ms. Li worked as the Strategic Investment Director of Baidu, where she was responsible for AI and mobile-related investments. Ms. Li worked at the investment banking division of Deutsche Bank and at UBS. Ms. Li received her double bachelor’s degrees in Computer Science and Business Management from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
Dr. Qingxiong Yang has served as WeRide’s Vice President since 2021. Prior to joining WeRide, Dr. Yang served as the Chief Executive Officer of MoonX.AI from 2018 to 2021. Dr. Yang worked as senior director of autonomous driving at DiDi from 2016 to 2017. Dr. Yang was an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science of the City University of Hong Kong from 2011 to 2016. Dr. Yang received his bachelor’s degree in Electric Engineering and Information Science from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2004, and Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the United States in 2010.