Yahoo! Research opens Israel Lab

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Yahoo! Inc. today announced that it has launched a new research lab in Haifa, Israel, its first in the region.

The Yahoo! Research Israel Lab will be led by Dr Ronny Lempel, an information organization and retrieval expert who will report directly to Dr Ricardo Baeza-Yates, vice president of Yahoo! Research.

The Yahoo! Research Israel Lab will focus on boiling down complex technology problems into simple solutions to change the game in Web search.

"Search is still in its infancy," said Prabhakar Raghavan, head of Yahoo! Research.

"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," he added.

Lempel previously worked at the Information Retrieval Group at IBM's Haifa Research Lab.

He had his BSc., MSc. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from  Technion-Israel Institute of Technology.

Yahoo! recently opened Yahoo! Labs – Bangalore and appointed eminent scientist Dr Rajeev Rastogi as head the new India lab.