Lars Eilstrup Rasmussen is a Danish computer scientist, technology executive, and the co-founder of

Google Maps Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panoramic views of streets (Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and rou ...

.He was the director of engineering for

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...

in London.Hutcheon, Stephen
Why I quit Google to join Facebook: Lars Rasmussen
''The Sydney Morning Herald'', 1 November 2010. In early 2003, Lars and his brother

Jens Jens may refer to: * Jens (given name), a list of people with the name * Jens (surname), a list of people * Jens, Switzerland, a municipality * 1719 Jens, an asteroid See also * Jensen (disambiguation) Jensen may refer to: People *Jensen (surn ...

co-founded a mapping-related startup, Where 2 Technologies, which was acquired by Google in October 2004. Rasmussen became the head of the Google Maps team and worked at Google until joining Facebook in late 2010.

Qualifications

In 1990, Rasmussen graduated from the

University of Aarhus Aarhus University ( da, Aarhus Universitet, abbreviated AU) is a public research university with its main campus located in Aarhus, Denmark. It is the second largest and second oldest university in Denmark. The university is part of the Coimbra Gr ...

with a degree in Computer Science and Mathematics. He gained his MSc in Computer Systems Engineering from the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 1 ...

in 1992. Rasmussen began his PhD, working with Mark Jerrum and Alistair Sinclair in the

Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science The Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science (LFCS) is a research institute within the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland. It was founded in 1987 and is a community of theoretical computer scientists with ...

at Edinburgh, then moved, with Sinclair, to

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and E ...

, USA. He received his PhD from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...

in 1998, for his thesis "On Approximating the Permanent and Other #P-Complete Problems".

Where 2 Technologies and Google Maps

In 2003, Lars and his brother,

, with Australians Noel Gordon and Stephen Ma, co-founded Where 2 Technologies, a mapping-related start-up in Sydney, Australia. This company was bought by

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

in October 2004, to create

. The four of them were subsequently employed by Google in the engineering team at the company's Australian office in

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mounta ...

.Sutter, John D.
The genius brothers behind Google Wave
CNN, 27 October 2009. Lars and Jens are also the originators of the Google Wave project.

Facebook

On 29 October 2010, Rasmussen announced that he had left Google, and was moving to

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

to work for

. At Facebook he was, among other things, the engineering director for the

Facebook Graph Search Facebook Graph Search was a semantic search engine that was introduced by Facebook in March 2013. It was designed to give answers to user natural language queries rather than a list of links. The name refers to the social graph nature of Facebook ...

project which is a

semantic search Semantic search denotes search with meaning, as distinguished from lexical search where the search engine looks for literal matches of the query words or variants of them, without understanding the overall meaning of the query. Semantic search seek ...

engine for the social network. In 2013 he and

Tom Stocky Tom Stocky is an American computer scientist and technology executive. He is vice president of product at insitro, a drug discovery startup. He was previously vice president of Search at Facebook. Stocky was a director of product management at Go ...

were listed as number 79 in ''The 100 Biggest Stars In Silicon Valley'' by

Business Insider ''Insider'', previously named ''Business Insider'' (''BI''), is an American financial and business news website founded in 2007. Since 2015, a majority stake in ''Business Insider''s parent company Insider Inc. has been owned by the German publ ...

. Rasmussen had been working in the Facebook London office.

Music start-up

On 27 April 2015 Rasmussen announced his departure from Facebook to co-found a music start-u
Weav Music Inc
with his partner Elomida Visviki. Lars Rasmussen has since moved to

Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates a ...

and became an angel investor.

Awards

On 19 October 2010, Lars and Jens Rasmussen were awarded the

Pearcey Award The Pearcey Awards are a set of prizes presented annually since 1998 by the Pearcey Foundation for achievement in the Australian ICT industry. Pearcey Award Categories Each year, the Pearcey Foundation presents 3 categories of award: ;Pearcey ...

for NSW ICT Entrepreneurs of the Year. In 2020, Rasmussen was named the recipient of the Green Oaks, Libertyville, Mundelein, Vernon Hills Chamber of Commerce second annual Stephanie Smith-Howard Volunteer Heart Award.

Investments

Rasmussen has made personal investments in a number of technology startups including Canva, an online design tool; and Posse, a point of interest-based recommendation service.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rasmussen, Lars Living people Google employees Facebook employees Aarhus University alumni UC Berkeley College of Engineering alumni Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Danish computer scientists Danish expatriates in the United States Danish expatriates in the United Kingdom Danish company founders Danish expatriates in Australia Year of birth missing (living people)