Y! STAR Travels to Europe – Donating Yahoo! Servers to Help Design Better Wave Engergy Converters!

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Administrator

As part of our Y! STAR Program (Yahoo! Servers to Academic Researchers) we donated 44 servers to the Centre for Ocean Energy Research at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth (NUI Maynooth). These machines will enable research that was impossible before in data-intensive computing and will be crunching data on renewable ocean wave power.

The donation is part of Yahoo!’s Y! STAR program (Yahoo! Servers To Academic Researchers) under which Yahoo! is refurbishing and donating decommissioned servers to university researchers. Over 1,500 servers have already been donated to 23 top universities in the U.S. and four universities in Switzerland through the Y! STAR Program, but NUI Maynooth is the first university in Ireland to receive a shipment. We are thrilled that these machines are helping with cutting-edge research in our community, and look forward to continuing our efforts with the Y! STAR Program!

Dan McCarthy from Yahoo! said: “Greater collaboration between top researchers and Yahoo! scientists and engineers around the world is a vital part of Yahoo!’s efforts to create inspiring and entertaining experiences for our users. I’m thrilled that these machines are having a second life here in Ireland and helping with cutting edge research.”

Ronan Costello, Assistant Director at the Centre for Ocean Energy Research National University of Ireland Maynooth added “This donation from Yahoo! will allow calculations that will lead to lower cost of renewable energy, contributing to a sustainable future. The hardware will be used to optimise the techno-economic performance of ocean wave energy conversion through an integrated analysis of the engineering, marine operations and economics. The research aims to provide a step change reduction in the cost of energy provided by wave energy conversion technologies. Such optimisation calculations are extremely computationally intensive and have only recently become practical but have already shown dramatic results.”

Yahoo! Sponsors CMU Silicon Valley Hackathon

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Administrator

Carnegie Mellon University Silicon Valley

Yahoo! was a proud sponsor of the Carnegie Mellon University Silicon Valley Masters students HTML5-themed hackathon. The hackathon attracted both undergraduate and graduate students and participants from the industry. The two day event focused on creating single-page HTML5 applications with Javascript for the logic.

In just 8 hours, the winning team, dubbed CoCoDojo, created an app that would allow programmers to edit and collaborate on code and brainstorm ideas on a virtual whiteboard. These students noticed that there was a need for a more useful collaborating tool amongst a group, especially if the group has members that are not located in the same region.

Congratulations are in order for the winning team, CoCoDojo (Collaborative Coding Dojo). This winning team includes graduate students Sky Hu, Lydian Lee, Clyde Li and Sean Xiao, and Daniel Fortner.

The event was a big success and Yahoo! was proud to sponsor an event that helps students build connections in a fun, competitive environment.

For additional information on the HTML5 hackathon, Carnegie Mellon University Silicon Valley, click here.

Yahoo! Labs Visits UCSD!

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Administrator

We had a great time with folks at UCSD! We met professors and students who are doing inspiring work. Gert Lanckriet, Lawrence Saul, Todd Coleman. Sanjoy Dasgupta, and Yaov Freund shared their work on machine learning, covering topics from efficient ways to find neighbors in high-dimensional spaces to a handwriting recognition system where the user and system train each other and to wearable electronics so small that they can be applied on a temporary tattoo. It was an exciting glimpse into the future.

Eric Bax, Research Scientist

Eric Bax, Research Scientist, started with a brief talk on validation of network classifiers, based on some work with James Li, a previous Yahoo! intern who is at Cornell University. Then they had fun simulating an online advertising marketplace. Professors and students became CEO’s, built teams, made deals with other teams, bid in an auction for ad calls, and found out how profitable their strategies could be. A team of professors acting as a data provider company came in with the most profit, through clever deal-making and a policy of selling to all.

Everyone enjoyed pizza, and the CEOs got Yahoo! memory sticks to commemorate their short stints as captains of industry!

Yahoo! On the Road this Summer

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Administrator

Yahoo! On the Road

Yahoo! On the Road is the world’s first mobile entertainment and innovation festival.We’ll be driving cross-country from New York to San Francisco, Yahoo! On the Road will be stopping in a different city every day. Yahoo! On the Road kicks off on May 3, in New York City with John Legend & the Salomé Chamber Orchestra. After finishing in the states, the tour will then jump the pond to Europe, starting in Berlin on June 11 and ending at the Yahoo! Wireless Festival in London on July 14. Musical performances will be streamed live for Yahoo! users everywhere at the Yahoo! On the Road site. The tour will also feature many of Yahoo!’s newly-reimaged products and experiences including Weather, Mail, Flickr, Yahoo! Music, and more.

Guided by entertainment reporter Ben Lyons, the Yahoo! On the Road tour will bring some of the world’s hottest bands, comedians, and surprise guests to inject surprise and entertainment into Yahoo! users’ day.

Whether it’s PEEPLES star Craig Robinson surprising patrons at a New York City restaurant, or one-of-a-kind performances by John Legend, Fall Out Boy, fun., The Lumineers, Kendrick Lamar, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, Imagine Dragons, and Empire of the Sun, Yahoo! will make everyday activities anything but ordinary.

Ticket information: For each concert, Yahoo! will be giving away tickets to fans who show off their Yahoo! pride at the designated bus stop in each city (while supplies last). Getting a ticket will be as easy as uploading a photo with Flickr or downloading the new Yahoo! Weather app.

Yahoo! is working with Spotify to enhance the digital music experience for users. Spotify will be integrated into editorial content throughout the Yahoo! On the Road site, with select content featured using the Spotify Play Bar, a custom music player built for Yahoo! using the Spotify API.

Below are highlights of the upcoming events.

DATE	CITY	PERFORMANCE/EVENT
May 3	New York City, NY	John Legend & Salomé Chamber Orchestra Ryan Leslie Comedian, Craig Robinson DJ Johnny Famous
May 7	Cincinnati, OH	Kendrick Lamar RaVaughn Comedian, Julian McCullogh DJ Johnny Famous
May 12	Milwaukee, WI	Macklemore & Ryan Lewis Skylar Grey DJ Clinton Sparks
May 13	Madison, WI	Fall Out Boy Comedian, Sarah Tiana DJ Clinton Sparks
May 15	St. Louis, MO	Imagine Dragons Owl City DJ Clinton Sparks
May 20	Dallas, TX	Empire of the Sun Gold Fields Comedian, Nick Rutherford DJ Mr. Best
May 26	Seattle, WA	Gossip Capital Cities Twenty-One Pilots Willy Moon DJ Michelle Pesce
May 28	Boise, ID	The Lumineers Dispatch Comedian, Adam Ray Chef, Fabio Viviani DJ Michelle Pesce
May 31	San Francisco, CA	fun. DJ Michelle Pesce

Fans can find the complete entertainment line up, get ticket information or simply be a tour “roadie” by visiting Yahoo! On The Road online or going to our Flickr, Twitter, or Facebook pages.

About Yahoo!

Yahoo! is focused on making the world’s daily habits inspiring and entertaining. By creating highly personalized experiences for our users, we keep people connected to what matters most to them, across devices and around the world. In turn, we create value for advertisers by connecting them with the audiences that build their businesses. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., and has offices located throughout the Americas, Asia Pacific (APAC) and the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) regions. For more information, visit the pressroom (pressroom.yahoo.net) or the company’s blog (yodel.yahoo.com).

Yahoo! is the trademark and/or registered trademark of Yahoo! Inc. All other names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Yahoo!, Yahoo! On The Road and their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Yahoo! Inc.

Achint Thomas at the UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering Research Expo for 2013

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Administrator

Achint Thomas, a Scientist at Yahoo! Labs working on anti-abuse science, was invited to be a judge at UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering Research Expo for 2013. It was a great visit and a chance to interact with some of the brightest engineering and science students as they presented their work during an open poster session. There were six departments showcasing their students’ work, including Bio Engineering, Computer Science and Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nano Engineering, and Structural Engineering. Achint spent most of the time viewing posters in the Computer Engineering related fields. The work was of very high caliber, and it was refreshing to see the students apply their research to practical problems by collaborating with local start-ups and big name companies alike.

Before the main judging event, Achint met with Prof. Ryan Kastner and his student Jason Oberg who described their novel work on theoretical assurances for hardware and system-level security. They also presented use-cases and a demo of a tool that was developed as part of the research. Achint also met with other long time collaborators, Kirill Levchenko a post-doc, and Tristan Halvorson a PhD student with whom Yahoo! is actively exploring the problem of the economics of account abuse.

Yahoo! Sponsors the AMPLab, and Donates Servers to Help University Research!

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Administrator

“Yahoo! is taking incredibly relevant research and implementing it at a scale you have never seen before”, said Ram Sriharsha, a Principal Software Engineer at Yahoo! while speaking at the Y! Star event in the University of California, Berkeley’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences’ AMPLab (Algorithms, Machine Learning and People Lab).

Ram, addressed a room of more than 25, post-graduate Computer Science students, and spoke about the exciting problem solving he gets to do at Yahoo!, while working on improving products that are part of millions of users daily habits.Yahoo!’s current focus on Cloud Computing, Machine learning and Crowdsourcing, tie very closely to the founding principles of the AMPLab at UC Berkeley, which makes them a fantastic partner.

The event on the Berkeley campus was to celebrate this great partnership between Yahoo! and the AMPLab, which is focused on addressing new challenges and opportunities in Big Data analytics. In an initiative called Y!STAR (Yahoo! Servers To Academic Researchers) Yahoo! is refurbishing and donating decommissioned servers to university researchers. So far, 2,400 servers, with a total estimated value over $980,000 have been distributed across to 36 campuses – 30 in the U.S., five in Europe, and one in India.

After the event, students had the opportunity to discuss internships, new grad and postdoctoral opportunities with Ram and other Yahoos at the event.

Yahoo! Labs Sponsors CRA-W Grad Cohort Event

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Administrator

This year, the 2013 CRA-W Graduate Cohort Workshop was held April 5-6, 2013 in Boston, Massachusetts. The CRA-W Graduate Cohort’s purpose is to increase the ranks of senior women in computing by establishing and mentoring nationwide communities of women through their graduate studies. Yahoo! was a proud sponsor for the CRA-W Graduate Cohort event. Yahoo! supports the research and careers of PhD students, and is committed to attract more female scientists to our team.

This workshop event provides strategies and mentoring for students in their second and third years of graduate school. Students meet for the two days with 20-25 senior computing researchers and professionals, who share meaningful information on graduate school survival skills, as well as more personal information and insights about their own experiences.

Suju Rajan, Senior Scientist in Content and Personalization Sciences, attended the event and was a speaker at this year’s event. Suju spoke to over 300 PhD and MS female students from 118 universities. Suju talked about what it’s like to work in a Research Lab, exciting challenges to solve in Machine Learning research, and the importance of a summer internship in a PhD career.

This was a great experience for attendees at the CRA-W Graduate Cohort event as well as for Yahoo!. We are delighted and honored to be a part of such a positive and enlightening event and will continue to support such events in the future.

Yahoo! Sponsors Outstanding Undergraduate Awards at UMASS

Posted on March 15, 2013 by Administrator

Yahoo! continues to support the academic community and the accomplishments of it’s students. The University of Massachusetts has chosen the undergraduate award recipients for this year. These awards are in recognition of the outstanding accomplishments of undergraduate students in the School.

Yahoo! proudly sponsored all of the awards in this category. Congratulations to the award recipeints on their accompishments!

Exemplary Achievement in Computer Science: Caleb Raitto
Achievement in Artificial Intelligence: Nicolas Ionnou
Achievement in Computer Science: Priscilla Briggs
Achievement in Computer Science: Gal Shenar
Achievement in Information Management: Jeffrey Pezzone
Achievement in Interdisciplinary Study: Anthony Battaglia
Achievement in Interdisciplinary Study: Steven Tenaglia
Achievement in Systems: Andrey Izotov
Achievement in Theory: Alexander Bristol

IIT Kharagpur HackU 2013 was a Success!

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Administrator

During February 28 – March 3, we conducted a university hack day at IIT Kharagpur in India. This hack day ties as the largest along with our 2012 Kanpur event delivering 48 demos again. Hack quality stands out however since top CS students, already recruited by Yahoo!/competition, participated enthusiastically in turn applying world-class science to address technical challenges relevant to Web industry. While some hack prototypes focused on creating social interaction and content consumption experiences for Mobile others focused on human machine interaction through gesture control. The winning hacks are listed below:

WikiGist – A Visual Navigator for Wikipedia that helps filter the important pages connected to a particular topic and displays them visually in increasing order of importance.
Follower Circles –A social app that helps twitter users group their followers into distinct communities by labeling them into relevant groups based on their common interests and similarities.This way a user can share tweets with only that group who is genuinely interested in that information.
Story Line –This Hack helps to find out the story line of the most prominent events from the history in chronology.

Congratulations to the winners!

Click HERE for a complete list of the IIT Kharagpur 2013 submitted hacks.

Research Scientist, Eric Bax, talks about his visit to UC Irvine

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Administrator

Eric Bax, Research Scientist

I had a fun visit to the UC Irvine computer science department on February 11, 2013. It was great to see professor Padhraic Smyth again after meeting in a NIPS workshop and to meet professor Alex Ihler. John Turner, a professor from the business school, joined in as well, contributing his acumen to the hands-on activity in my talk.

I went to give a talk about validation of network classifiers, an interesting challenge in machine learning. The students wanted to hear about some real-world challenges, so we also did an activity where they pretended to have companies participating in an online advertising exchange.

Some student teams were advertising companies and others were data provider companies. The challenge for advertisers was to place winning bids for the best ad calls. The challenge for data providers was to profit from selling their data about which ad calls were most valuable.

It was great fun — a very active group. There was some pretty intense negotiation and deal-making: exclusive data rights, deals for percentages of profits, the back-and-forth of agreeing on prices. Once the ad auction was held, we had a chance to analyze which teams made the most money and why.

We had a lot of fun with an interesting problem — setting prices for information. It is a neat problem because it touches many areas of study, including computer science, statistics, economics, business, and public policy.
The students had a great discussion about the activity, and they came up with interesting ideas on a number of fronts: negotiation, deal structure, and thinking about the nature of the problem itself.

After the talk and activity, I met with some students. One, Chris DuBois, is doing interesting work on networks that evolve over time. I connected him with James Li, at Cornell, who is doing work on similar problems. James was an intern here at Yahoo! a few summers ago, and we still collaborate on follow-on research.

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