“We don’t have unlimited money so we have to have unlimited brains.”

 

Dr. Yoelle Maarek received her Ph.D. from Technion in computer science in 1989 for a dissertation on computer search, before the World Wide Web existed. Maarek opened Google’s R&D facility in Israel leading the team that created Google’s “suggested search” capability – the feature that offers several suggestions to complete your thought when you start typing a phrase into the search box. It was a challenging project that no one at Google headquarters thought was possible – but Maarek did it.

More recently, she changed jobs to run Yahoo’s research lab in Haifa: one of only three such facilities that the company operates outside of California. She supervises about 20 computer science Ph.D.s, half of which are Technion graduates.

“Here at Yahoo! we don’t have the resources of Google, so we have to be smarter,” says Maarek. “We don’t have unlimited money so we have to have unlimited brains. It’s a bit like Israel versus America.”

In the video below, Dr. Ronny Lempel, Director of Research, at Yahoo! Israel and Technion alumnus, lectures on: Beyond 10 Blue Links: How Search Engines Help Users. The Lecture was delivered at Technion on Nov. 17, 2011 at the 80th birthday celebration for Prof. Azaria Paz a founder and member of the faculty of computer science for 30 years.

 

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