March 13, 2008
Yahoo! Research Opens Israel Lab
By Raju Shanbhag, TMCnet Contributor
It does not matter even if the fear of takeover by Microsoft (News - Alert) looms large over Yahoo; the company is looking to expand its presence all over the globe. Weeks after opening a new R&D center in Bangalore, India, Yahoo has announced that it has launched a new research lab in Haifa, Israel – it’s first in the region. The lab will be led by Dr. Ronny Lempel, a renowned information organization and retrieval expert who will report directly to Dr. Ricardo Baeza-Yates, vice president of Yahoo! Research.
Lempel received his BSc., MSc. and Ph.D. in Computer Science at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. Focusing on research and development for enterprise search systems, Lempel has previously worked at the Information Retrieval Group at IBM's (News - Alert) Haifa Research Lab. He is the author of numerous papers and received several awards for his work on search engine technology. He has also won the Best Presentation Award at the International World Wide Web Conference twice.
The Yahoo! Research Israel Lab will focus on breaking down the complex technology problems into simple solutions to change the market dynamics in Web search. Yahoo! says it is committed to discovering new methodologies in Search Engine Marketing to deliver compelling experiences on the Web. Yahoo believes that Yahoo! Research Israel Lab provides the best opportunity to create the technologies that will design the next generation of search on the Internet.
Prabhakar Raghavan, head of Yahoo! Research, said in a company press release, “Search is still in its infancy. At Yahoo!, we are working on the hard core science that can lead to search experiences that are significantly beyond the current art. Ronny Lempel is a great addition to the world-class team that we have assembled to develop a new approach to Web search. His expertise in search technologies and ties to local academia will help us draw on the best talent and knowledge from across the region and strengthen our worldwide R&D efforts.”
Raju Shanbhag is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.
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