I am currently at Google Inc., managing a group looking into how structured data can be used in web search.Until recently, I was a professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington.
The main goal of my work (both on the research and product development) is to build tools that simplify people's access to data, typically in complex data environments which I refer to as dataspaces. To support this goal, my areas of interest are integrating data from multiple (structured and unstructured) sources, machine learning approaches to resolving schema heterogeneity, personal information management, management of XML data, and query processing and optimization. I am very interested in the combination of techniques from Artificial Intelligence and Data Management. I believe that the data management community should shift its focus away from enterprise computing and consider consumer-facing applications. Dataspaces offer an abstraction at which problems relevant to consumer-facing applications can be addressed.
At UW I used to teach graduate and undergraduate courses in data management, and believe in introducing some of my research ideas as early as I can in the curriculum (see a paper I wrote on my data management course.)
I am also an entrepreneur in my free time. I have founded two
companies: Nimble Technology (Enterprise Information
Integration) and Transformic (Deep Web Search).
In my other free
time, you can either see me at the gym under a big pile of
weights, jogging, in a movie cinema, trying to explain to a
barista how to prepare a double split-shot 2% wet
cappuccino, or, more likely, with my wife
Oriana
and our two kids
Karina and
Kasper.
To follow my current thoughts and ideas, please check out my blog.
My publications up to 2006 can be found on my UW homepage, and my DBLP entry. I'll put the new ones here.