Work
| Oct 2004 - current - Working at Google in the Search Quality team; I work on algorithms to return the best search results for queries. |
| Summer 2004 - Worked at Microsoft Research in Redmond, WA, on general ranking algorithms with a focus of ranking for Web search results. |
| Summer 2003 - Worked at Google in Mountain View, CA, on trying to understand the different kinds of users that use Google and what techniques they have for searching. |
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Summer 2002 - Worked at Intel in Santa Clara, CA, on global placement for VLSI design.
To explain what this means, consider the picture above in which I am giving a simultaneous chess exhibition. Now suppose that one is given the approximate number of moves that it will take to defeat a given opponent, the average time a given player will take to make a move, the slack (or thinking time) I need for each specific opponent, and the speed at which I walk (which decreases over time as I get tired). The task is to find an optimal path for me to travel such that I complete all games in the minimal amount of time (and hopefully make it to lunch before starving). Alternatively one can rephrase the problem by asking where to place the people around the tables. A reduction that shows this is NP-hard may be sufficient as well. Actually I did something quite different, but equally challenging. The picture is from my going away chess simul at Intel - and yes, I did win all 20 games. |
| Summer 2001 - Worked at Hewlett-Packard in Boise, ID, on performance analysis for their virtual arrays. |
| Summer 2000 - Worked at Ephibian in Tucson, AZ, designing and developing database-backed websites. As you have probably gathered, my focus was on design rather than look and flow. |
| Chess Camps - I have co-organized national chess camps in Arizona, and taught at others located in Indiana and Georgia. |
| Chess Various - Over the years I have written several theoretical and instructional chess articles in local, national, and international journals. I've also lectured and given exhibitions at scholastic and large chess events. |