Fall 2008 CSE Colloquium Series

Search and Advertising Sciences: An Introduction

Dr. JC Mao

Senior Director in Search & Advertising Sciences
Head of Contextual and Display Advertising Sciences Group
Yahoo! Labs

Date: October 3
Time: 10:10 AM - 11:20 PM
2400 Anthony Hall

Host: Anil K. Jain

Abstract

In this talk, I will first give an overview of Yahoo! and Yahoo! Labs. Then, I will provide an introduction to web search and various forms of online advertising, including sponsored search and contextual & display advertising. Throughout the introduction, I will highlight a number of technical challenges that we are facing in Search and Advertising Sciences.

Biography

Jianchang (JC) Mao received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Michigan State University in 1994. Dr. Mao is currently a Senior Director in Search & Advertising Sciences at Yahoo! and the head of Contextual and Display Advertising Sciences Group. He was also an engineering director responsible for the development of backend technologies for several Yahoo! Social Search products, including Y! Answers, Y! MyWeb, and Y! Bookmarks. Prior to joining Yahoo!, Dr. Mao was a Director of Emerging Technologies & a Principal Architect at Verity Inc., a leader in Enterprise Search (acquired by Autonomy) from 2000 to 2004. Before that, Dr. Mao was a research staff member at the IBM Almaden Research Center from 1994 to 2000. Dr. Mao has received a number of awards in industry as well as academia, including Yahoo! Superstar Team Award in 2008 (as a team captain); Verity Key Contributor Award in 2003; Honorable Mention Award, ACM KDD Cup 2002; IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Award in 1997 and Research Division awards in 1998 & 2000; IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks Outstanding Paper Award in 1996; Honorable Mention Award from the International Pattern Recognition Society in 1993. Dr. Mao served as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, 1999-2000.