Hi, I'm Shanzheng Tan.

I lead generative AI delivery at Canva.

Before Canva, I spent three years with the Game Intelligence team at Microsoft Research Cambridge. There I ran the programme behind WHAM (Muse), a generative model of gameplay published in Nature in 2025, and I’m one of its ten primary authors. I also worked on its real-time successor, WHAMM, which shipped as a playable Quake II demo in Copilot Labs.

Most of my work sits where research meets launch: timelines, data, ethics review, licensing, and the steps it takes to get a model in front of users. Earlier in my career, I led an extended reality team at A*STAR in Singapore and ran national STEM programmes at IMDA.

Outside work, you’ll usually find me on the water. More on that in Beyond Work.