Tao Yang , is an American computer scientist. Yang is the Chief Scientist and Senior Vice President of Ask.com

Ask.com

Ask is a Q&A focused search engine founded in 1996 by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen in Berkeley, California. The original software was implemented by Gary Chevsky from his own design. Warthen, Chevsky, Justin Grant, and others built the early AskJeeves.com website around that core engine...

 for web search. He is also a tenured full professor

Professor

A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...

 in Computer Science

Computer science

Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...

 at University of California, Santa Barbara

University of California, Santa Barbara

The University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system. The main campus is located on a site in Goleta, California, from Santa Barbara and northwest of Los...

.

Biography

Yang received his B.S. degree in Computer Science from Zhejiang University

Zhejiang University

Zhejiang University , sometimes referred to as Zheda, is a national university in China. Founded in 1897, Zhejiang University is one of China's oldest institutions of higher education...

 in 1984. In 1987, Yang received his M.E. degree in Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...

 from Zhejiang University. Yang obtained his M.Sc in 1990 and Ph.D. in 1993 both in Computer Science from Rutgers University

Rutgers University

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...

.

Yang joined the Department of Computer Science at University of California, Santa Barbara in 1993.

Research and business

Yang specializes in parallel and distributed systems, Internet search, and parallel scientific computing. He has co-authored over eighty journal and conference papers.

Together with Apostolos Gerasoulis

Apostolos Gerasoulis

Apostolos Gerasoulis is the co-creator of Teoma, an Internet search engine that powers Ask.com. Gerasoulis is a former Professor of Computer Science at Rutgers University; he co-founded Teoma along with his colleagues at Rutgers in 2000. Gerasoulis has appeared in TV commercials for Ask.com.-...

, Yang ran research and development of the Teoma

Teoma

Teoma, pronounced chawmuh , was an Internet search engine founded in 2000 by Professor Apostolos Gerasoulis and his colleagues at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Professor Tao Yang from the University of California, Santa Barbara co-led technology R&D. Their research grew out of the 1998 DiscoWeb...

 search engine from its startup stage in 2000 and after it was acquired by Ask Jeeves (now Ask.com

Ask.com

Ask is a Q&A focused search engine founded in 1996 by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen in Berkeley, California. The original software was implemented by Gary Chevsky from his own design. Warthen, Chevsky, Justin Grant, and others built the early AskJeeves.com website around that core engine...

) in 2001.

Teoma

Teoma

Teoma, pronounced chawmuh , was an Internet search engine founded in 2000 by Professor Apostolos Gerasoulis and his colleagues at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Professor Tao Yang from the University of California, Santa Barbara co-led technology R&D. Their research grew out of the 1998 DiscoWeb...

 has been the backend search engine for Ask.com

Ask.com

Ask is a Q&A focused search engine founded in 1996 by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen in Berkeley, California. The original software was implemented by Gary Chevsky from his own design. Warthen, Chevsky, Justin Grant, and others built the early AskJeeves.com website around that core engine...

 since December 2001, competing with other search engines such as Google

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

 and Yahoo!

Yahoo!

Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...

.

Awards

• 1994, Research Initiation Award, from USA National Science Foundation (NSF)
  National Science Foundation
  The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
  
  
• 1997, CAREER Award, from NSF
• 2002, Noble Jeeviant Award, from AskJeeves

External links

• Home page at UCSB