Hong Z. Tan is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering with courtesy appointments in Mechanical Engineering and Psychological Sciences at Purdue University. Her research focuses on haptic human-machine interfaces and haptic perception. She has published more than 100 peer-reviewed journal and conference articles in haptics research. She is known internationally as a leading expert on haptics psychophysics, taking a perception-based approach to solving engineering problems. She is frequently invited to give keynote speeches at international conferences and research institutions, educating a broad audience on haptics and its emerging applications in human computer interaction, robotics, medicine and education.

Tan received her Bachelor's degree in Biomedical Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, P.R. China. She earned her Master and Doctorate degrees, both in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She was a Research Scientist at the MIT Media Lab before joining the faculty at Purdue's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 1998. She has held a McDonnell Visiting Fellowship at Oxford University, a Visiting Associate Professorship in the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University, a Guest Researcher position in the Institute of Life Science and Technology at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and a Visiting Researcher position at Microsoft Research Asia.

Tan was a recipient of the prestigious US National Science Foundation's Early Faculty Development (CAREER) Award, and she was a Chinese National Natural Science Funds' Distinguished (Overseas) Young Scholar. In addition to serving on numerous program committees, she was a co-organizer (with Blake Hannaford) of the International Symposium on Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Environment and Teleoperator Systems from 2003 to 2005. In 2006, Tan served as the Founding Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Haptics (TCH). The TCH played a key role in launching the IEEE Transactions on Haptics (ToH) in 2008. Tan has served as a ToH Associate Editor since the journal's birth, and received a Meritorious Service Award in 2012. She is currently Editor-in-Chief of the World Haptics Conference Editorial Board.