Craig Graham Nevill-Manning (né Nevill) is a New Zealand computer scientist who founded

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 ...

's first remote engineering center, located in

midtown Manhattan Midtown Manhattan is the central portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan and serves as the city's primary central business district. Midtown is home to some of the city's most prominent buildings, including the Empire State Buildi ...

, where he was an Engineering Director. He also created

Froogle Google Shopping, formerly Google Product Search, Google Products and Froogle, is a Google service created by Craig Nevill-Manning which allows users to search for products on online shopping websites and compare prices between different vendor ...

(now Google Shopping), a product search engine. He is now Head of Engineering at

Sidewalk Labs Sidewalk Labs is an urban planning and infrastructure subsidiary of Google. Its stated goal is to improve urban infrastructure through technological solutions, and tackle issues such as cost of living, efficient transportation and energy usage. ...

Academic and professional career

Nevill-Manning graduated with a BSc in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

from the

University of Canterbury The University of Canterbury ( mi, Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha; postnominal abbreviation ''Cantuar.'' or ''Cant.'' for ''Cantuariensis'', the Latin name for Canterbury) is a public research university based in Christchurch, New Zealand. It was ...

. He received his PhD from the

University of Waikato , mottoeng = For The People , established = 1964; years ago , endowment = (31 December 2021) , budget = NZD $263.6 million (31 December 2020) , chancellor = Sir Anand Satyanand, GNZM, QSO, KStJ , vice_chancellor = Neil Quigley , cit ...

where he was a co-creator of the Weka machine learning suite and the Greenstone digital library software. In 1994, he invented the

sequitur algorithm Sequitur (or Nevill-Manning algorithm) is a recursive algorithm developed by Craig Nevill-Manning and Ian H. Witten in 1997 that infers a hierarchical structure (context-free grammar) from a sequence of discrete symbols. The algorithm operates in ...

, which uses data compression to infer the structure of a sequence of symbols. Prior to joining Google in 2001 as a senior research scientist, he was an assistant professor in the

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

Department at

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and was ...

, and was a post-doctoral fellow in the Biochemistry department at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

. His research interests center on using techniques from

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

data compression In information theory, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Any particular compression is either lossy or lossless. Lossless compressio ...

and

computational biology Computational biology refers to the use of data analysis, mathematical modeling and Computer simulation, computational simulations to understand biological systems and relationships. An intersection of computer science, biology, and big data, the ...

to provide more structured search over information. In 2016, Nevill-Manning joined

Alphabet, Inc. Alphabet Inc. is an American multinational technology conglomerate holding company headquartered in Mountain View, California. It was created through a restructuring of Google on October 2, 2015, and became the parent company of Google and ...

subsidiary

as CTO.

Awards

In 2010 Nevill-Manning received a distinguished alumni award from the University of Waikato. In 2009 he won a World Class New Zealand Award in the Information and Communications category.World Class New Zealand 2009 Winners

References

External links

University of Canterbury graduate profile
American computer scientists Google employees Living people New Zealand computer scientists University of Canterbury alumni University of Waikato alumni Rutgers University faculty Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) People educated at Marlborough Boys' College {{Compu-scientist-stub