Meet our team

Dr. Chih-Han Yu co-founded Appier and serves as our Chief Executive Officer and as the Representative Director of Appier Group, Inc. since February 2019. Dr. Yu attended Harvard University, obtaining his Ph.D. degree in AI. Prior to Harvard, he earned his MS degree from Stanford’s AI Lab. Dr. Yu had 20+ years of AI experience. Before starting Appier, he primarily applying AI algorithms in the field of machine learning and autonomous control, including autonomous four-legged robots and self-driving cars. He also has published tens of publications in the field of AI robotics and machine learning. He was nominated for the 2011 IFAAMAS Victor Lesser Distinguished Dissertation Award and served as researcher at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute. Dr. Yu was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, making Appier Inc. the only Asian AI company to make the list.

Dr. Wan-Ling “Winnie” Lee co-founded Appier and serves as our Chief Operating Officer. She has served as Director of Appier Group, Inc. since February 2019. Prior to joining Appier, Winnie was an immunologist for 10 years. Receiving her Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis and her MS from Stanford University, Winnie has authored a number of publications in top-tier journals, including four Nature papers, with her research work receiving more than 1000 citations. She also has served as a research technologist at Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School. Under her leadership, Appier has grown from a five person startup to a rapidly growing company with employees throughout Asia and Europe. In 2020, Winnie was named one of the Top 100 People Transforming Business in Asia by Business Insider due to her success in building and scaling Appier’s operations and driving its business strategy. In 2021, Winnie was recognized as one of 20 outstanding female leaders by Forbes Asia’s annual Power BusinessWomen list for her remarkable achievements despite challenges posed by the pandemic.

Dr. Ming-Y “Robert” Chen served as our Chief Technology Officer. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Chen possesses over 20 years of experience in driving technology strategy, leading large-scale organizations, building scalable platforms for global deployment, and conducting AI technology research. At Appier, he leads product development and technology across all product lines, directs R&D for CrossX and ESS solutions and formulates strategies from high-value customer acquisitions, retargeting to customer retention and engagement, accelerating transaction process and insight generation. His leadership in applying advanced decision-making and generative AI technologies is instrumental in enhancing Appier’s solutions and efficiently optimizing ROI for Appier's customers. Dr. Chen joined Appier from Compass where he built the first modern enterprise real estate end-to-end platform and led a global engineering team of over 300 scientists and engineers. Before Compass, he established the industry’s first cloud-based housing valuation system in Zillow and a large-scale news recommendation system in Microsoft with machine learning technology, improving users’ personalized experience.

Chia-Yung “Joe” Su co-founded Appier and served as our Chief Information Officer. He has served as Director of Appier Group, Inc. since February 2019. Mr. Su graduated from National Chiao Tung University (NCTU) and was ranked first in his Computer Science and Information Engineering class. He received the NCTU Distinguished Academic Contribution Award and was also elected as an Honorary Member of the Phi Tau Phi Scholastic Honors Society of the Republic of China. He earned his MS degree at Harvard University. Mr. Su has published research papers on network and systems design. Prior to Appier, Mr. Su co-founded and ran Plaxie, an independent game studio focused on developing intelligent mobile and social games. Mr. Su is an expert in large-scale systems and a highly skilled programmer. He has system design experience and expertise in a variety of areas, including VoIP, social games, distributed computing, big data technologies, and marketing technologies. As a CIO, Mr. Su charts the information and technology direction for Appier as it builds AI platforms, including jointly developing the CrossX AI platform, Appier’s first technology solution. He works closely with industry partners to stay up-to-date on the latest tech trends and aims to foster strategic alliances.

Dr. Che-Hsu “Joe" Chang is Appier’s Chief Strategy Officer. In this role Dr. Chang is responsible for Appier’s mergers and acquisitions (M&A), partnership strategy, overseeing the business’s overall health and global growth. As a member of the executive leadership team, he partners closely with the senior management to drive the long-term growth of the company and capture opportunities in new markets and technologies. Dr. Chang began his career at McKinsey and Co. in New Jersey and New York, USA, where he spent 7 years in co-leading and growing the healthcare and business technology practices. He also has extensive experience with startups (Flatiron Health) and global corporations (IQVIA). He brings more than 12 years of experience across business strategy, product management and management consulting to Appier. Dr. Chang earned his ScD degree in Public Health from Harvard University, and MS degree in Industrial Hygiene and BS degree in Physical Therapy from National Taiwan University.

Dr. Shou-De Lin is our Chief Machine Learning (ML) Consultant and Professor of Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering at National Taiwan University (NTU). With 20+ years of experience in AI,machine learning, data mining and natural language processing, Dr. Lin is the recipient of several prestigious research awards and brings a mix of both academic and industry expertise to Appier. He has advised more than 50 global companies in the research and application of AI, winning awards from Microsoft, Google and IBM for his work. He led or co-led the NTU team to win 7 ACM KDD Cup championships. He has over 100 publications in top-tier journals and conferences, winning various dissertation awards. After joining Appier, Dr. Lin led the AiDEAL team to win the Best Overall AI-based Analytics Solution in the 2020 Artificial Intelligence Breakthrough Awards. Dr. Lin holds a BS-EE degree t from NTU and an MS-EECS degree from the University of Michigan. He also holds an MS degree in Computational Linguistics and a Ph.D. in Computer Science, both from the University of Southern California.

Dr. Hsuan-Tien Lin is our Chief Data Science Consultant and Professor of Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering at National Taiwan University (NTU). As a beloved figure in Asia’s AI community, Dr. Lin’s research interests include theoretical foundations of machine learning (ML), studies on new learning problems and improvements on learning algorithms. Between 2010-2013, Dr. Lin co-led NTU’s team to win 6 ACM KDD Cup championships. He co-authored a machine learning textbook “Learning from Data,” which is a bestseller on Amazon. He led one of the most popular Mandarin ML courses on Coursera and has authored approximately 100 papers in the area of ML and AI. Dr. Lin received many academic recognitions, including the Young Scholars’ Creativity Award from the Foundation for the Advancement of Outstanding Scholarship (FAOS) and the Outstanding Mentoring Award and Distinguished Teaching Award from NTU. Dr. Lin earned his Ph.D. and MS in computer science from the California Institute of Technology, and served as a long time consultant before joining Appier formally.

Jing-Ting “Magic” Tu has served as Director of Appier Group, Inc. since August 2019, and is also our Senior Vice President of Sales for Global. He joined Appier in 2016 and is responsible for streamlining the product development process, from product ideation to product launch, collaborating with various teams including R&D, product management, marketing and business development. AIXON, the AI audience prediction and analysis platform, is the first product that his team launched. Prior to joining Appier, Mr. Tu was the director of software product management at HTC, leading the overall software experience planning for the HTC Sense smartphone and accessories. He also led the program management team that took care of third party vendors and partners, including Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Nokia for cross-company projects. Before HTC, Mr. Tu was the lead developer in Springsoft (now Synopsys), an electronic design automation company based in Taiwan.

Koji Tachibana has been our Senior Vice President of Finance since June 2020. At Appier, he oversees the accounting and finance departments and is responsible for smooth communication with investors and effective execution of financial plans. In July, 2021, he took on a dual role as Head of Appier Japan. In this new position, he ensures tight alignment and collaboration between Appier Global and Japan. Mr. Tachibana brings a holistic perspective to Appier’s Japan business and localize its global operations to suit the demands of the Japanese market. Mr. Tachibana joined Nomura Securities in 1997, where he supported fundraising and IPOs (Initial Public Offerings). Ten years later, he moved to the public sector and worked at the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, where he was in charge of the sale of government-owned assets. He also worked in the investment business as an independent investment advisor before joining DeNA in 2011, where he led the corporate finance division as an executive officer, responsible for M&A strategy, finance, accounting, public relations, investor relations and internal IT. Mr. Tachibana graduated from the University of Tokyo, Department of Law.

Dr. Lee-Feng Chien has served as Outside Director and a member of the Audit and Supervisory Committee of Appier Group, Inc. since February 2019. Dr. Chien is a veteran of the technology industry and world-renowned for his expertise in AI, information retrieval and natural language processing. He started his career at Academia Sinica Institute of Information Science, where he was a researcher and deputy director. He concurrently served as a contract professor at National Taiwan University (NTU) and consulted for Microsoft Asia’s research institute. Dr. Chien has published more than 100 papers in data search and processing and is a founder of the Asian Language Information Retrieval Conference. Dr. Chien was most recently at the helm of Google Taiwan, where he supervised growth and operations as Managing Director for 14 years, leading Google Taiwan to grow into the largest R&D center in Asia with more than 3,000 employees. Dr. Chien earned his Ph.D. in computer science and information engineering from National Taiwan University.

Takashi Motomura has served as Outside Director and Member of Audit and Supervisory Committee of Appier Group, Inc. since August 2019. Mr. Motomura is a Managing Director and Japan Representative of TGVest Capital, responsible for sourcing and managing investment opportunities in Japan. Mr. Motomura is experienced in VC and growth investments, especially in the technology space. Prior to joining TGVest in 2018, he was a Vice President of INCJ of Japan. During his time working with INCJ, he participated in major deals such as the investments in Renesas Electronics. Mr. Motomura holds a bachelor’s degree from Hitotsubashi University of Japan.

Daisuke Oshita has served as Outside Director and Member of Audit and Supervisory Committee of Appier Group, Inc. since September 2020. Mr. Oshita started his career at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu LLC. Mr. Oshita also has experience working as an attorney admitted in both Japan and New York at Nagashima Ohno & Tsunematsu. Mr. Oshita is the founder of CrossOver LAW FIRM, where he currently serves as Representative Partner.He is the first lawyer in the Listing Examination Department of the Tokyo Stock Exchange (Japan Exchange Self-Regulatory Organization). He has been involved in compliance and governance issues of companies applying for listing. He has experience in advising many listed companies at Nagashima Ohno & Tsunematsu and in supporting IPOs as a certified public accountant.

Ching-Hua “Brett” Ho has served as Outside Director and Member of the Audit and Supervisory Committee of Appier Group, Inc. since 30 March 2022. Mr. Ho has extensive experience in operation and management in the software industry. In the past, he served as the president or senior executive of a number of industry leading companies, in charge of the overall operation management. His previous roles include Chief Operating Officer of Camelot Information Technology (Camelot Business China), President of A.Best Shopping Mall and Supermarket Chain Store, Chief Executive Officer of Shenzhen Kingdee International Software Group, Global Vice President and President of Siebel System Greater China and East Asia, President of Yonyou Software , Global Vice President and President of Broadvision APAC and Japan., and Technical Sales Director, East Coast of Oracle USA and General Manager of Oracle Taiwan. Mr. Ho is highly respected by the industry based on his profound knowledge and practical experience in management positions in multinational companies and the Greater China region, as well as being a mentor for many Taiwanese startups and entrepreneurship programs in Taiwan. Mr. Ho continually provides his professional advice on Appier's operation strategies and critical decisions, together with incisive insights on sales business and talent cultivation. Mr. Ho holds a BS degree in the International Relations sub-division of Political Science from National Taiwan University, MS degree in Computer Science from the University of Maryland and an MS Degree in Diplomacy from National Chengchi University.