SUNNYVALE, Calif.–Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO), a leading global Internet company, today announced that it has expanded its research operations into Europe and Latin America with the opening of new facilities in Spain and Chile. Renowned Web retrieval and mining expert Dr. Ricardo Baeza-Yates will lead both centers in their focus on topics related to Web search and information extraction. He will be mainly based in Barcelona and report directly to Dr. Prabhakar Raghavan, Head of Yahoo! Research.
Yahoo! Research’s Barcelona office will be run in conjunction with the Center for Innovation Barcelona Media, a non-profit institution with local industry and Catalan government support, which has ties to Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) and other local universities. This first Yahoo! Research location in Europe will serve as the company’s magnet for the best European talent in key research areas. It also provides Yahoo! with the capability to tap into innovative ideas and research from students and faculty at many of the local universities in Barcelona and other major cities. The center’s new facility will be at the Parc Barcelona Media, the new reference point for media industry research and academia in the 22@ district in downtown Barcelona.
“With the recent hires of search industry experts including Andrei Broder and now Ricardo, Yahoo! continues to expand its growing bench of world-class technical talent and scientists”
Yahoo! Research’s Santiago office will be run in conjunction with the Center for Web Research (CWR), which was created by Baeza-Yates and funded by the Millennium Scientific Initiative of the Planning Ministry and hosted by the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences at the University of Chile. The partnership with the CWR presents a unique opportunity for top level researchers to join in a common project and collaborate on new and innovative ideas with faculty and students. This unit will join other advanced research centers already present at the University, becoming part of a very attractive and diverse setting for innovation in Chile.
“With the recent hires of search industry experts including Andrei Broder and now Ricardo, Yahoo! continues to expand its growing bench of world-class technical talent and scientists,” said Prabhakar Raghavan, head of Yahoo! Research. “This is an exciting opportunity for Yahoo! Research to draw on the talent and knowledge across Europe and Latin America and strengthen our collaboration with universities that lead in research and development.”
Baeza-Yates, a former Catalonian Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) researcher and Professor at UPF, will play a crucial role in helping to establish strong partnerships between Barcelona Media, CWR and Yahoo! as well as draw on the expertise of the vast technical talent throughout Europe and Latin America. Baeza-Yates is an expert on information retrieval and one of the top scientists in this area. He earned a Bachelor and Masters Degree in both Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from the University of Chile, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. He is also the co-author of Modern Information Retrieval, the most used textbook on search, as well as several other books.
“Yahoo! provides me with the opportunity to discover and build the new sciences of the next generation of the Internet and have an impact on more than 400 million users,” said Baeza-Yates. “Our partnerships with Barcelona Media and the Center for Web Research provide Yahoo! with the opportunity to tap into a wealth of expertise in exploring and discovering innovative techniques in various areas of Web research.”
“The science of the Internet is still very much in its infancy and there are very few experts in the world that have the capabilities and know-how to move the needle forward in this area,” said Dr. Usama Fayyad, Yahoo!’s chief data officer and senior vice president overseeing Yahoo! Research. “We believe that the expansion of Yahoo! Research across Europe and Latin America provides us with the opportunity to tap into some of the most renowned scientists in the world to help Yahoo enhance its content and search offerings that reach our growing global base of more than 400 million users, the world’s largest Internet audience.”
About Yahoo! Research
Yahoo! Research works on developing the world-class science that will deliver the next generation of businesses to the company. Yahoo! Research scientists study data-driven analysis, high-quality search, algorithms and economic models. Yahoo! manages many of the largest and richest data repositories in the world, and researchers mine insights from these giant collections, individually and collectively, maintaining the privacy of our users while setting new standards for user value. Yahoo! Research has facilities in Silicon Valley, Southern California, and Berkeley, Calif. as well as in New York City, Barcelona, Spain, and Santiago, Chile.
About Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global Internet brand and one of the most trafficked Internet destinations worldwide. Yahoo! seeks to provide online products and services essential to users’ lives, and offers a full range of tools and marketing solutions for businesses to connect with Internet users around the world. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.
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Source: Business Wire / PDF