Craig Nevill-Manning

Craig Graham Nevill-Manning (né Nevill)^[1] is a New Zealand computer scientist who founded Google's first remote engineering centre, located in midtown Manhattan, where he was an Engineering Director. He also created Froogle (now Google Shopping), a product search engine.^[2] He is now Head of Engineering at Sidewalk Labs.^[3]

Academic and professional career

Nevill-Manning graduated with a BSc in computer science from the University of Canterbury. He received his PhD from the University of Waikato^[4] where he was a co-creator of the Weka machine learning suite and the Greenstone digital library software.^[5] His doctoral advisor was Ian Witten.^[6] In 1994, he invented the sequitur algorithm, which uses data compression to infer the structure of a sequence of symbols.

Craig was invited to join Google at its formation but declined and then joined a little later on. ^[7]

Prior to joining Google in 2001 as a senior research scientist, he was an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Rutgers University, and was a post-doctoral fellow in the Biochemistry department at Stanford University. His research interests centre on using techniques from machine learning, data compression and computational biology to provide more structured search over information.^{[citation needed]}

In 2016, Nevill-Manning joined Alphabet, Inc. subsidiary Sidewalk Labs as CTO.^[8]

Awards

In 2009 he won a World Class New Zealand Award in the Information and Communications category.^[2]

In 2010 Nevill-Manning received a distinguished alumni award from the University of Waikato.^[9]

Community

In his own time Craig manages a website service that puts Olympic glory in proportion. He asks: "Who leads the world in medals when you correct for population? That is, which country wins the most medals per capita?" His site, which is updated daily during the Olympics, provides the answer: https://medalspercapita.com/. Media interest in per-capita statistics typically surround his website each Olympic games.^[10]

References

1. Laugesen, Ruth (15 January 2011). "Craig and Kirsten Nevill-Manning - the Listener". Noted. Archived from the original on 7 May 2019. Retrieved 7 May 2019.
2. World Class New Zealand 2009 Winners Archived 2013-02-27 at the Wayback Machine
3. "Sidewalk Labs Team". Archived from the original on 20 February 2021. Retrieved 19 August 2019.
4. https://waikato-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/3h5gm/64WAIKATO_ALMA2156446460003401
5. "Google's top Kiwi Craig Nevill-Manning named one of America's greatest immigrants by high-tech Carnegie Institute". 13 July 2015.
6. "Craig Nevill-Manning - The Mathematics Genealogy Project". mathgenealogy.org. Retrieved 9 April 2023.
7. "The clever Kiwi who was wooed by Google". NZ Herald. 23 September 2007. Retrieved 29 May 2023.
8. "Sidewalk Labs, Google's Company for Cities, Builds Its Inaugural Executive Team". Re/code. 22 February 2016. Retrieved 22 April 2016.
9. "Google expert honoured with Distinguished Alumni Award". University of Waikato. 9 August 2010. Archived from the original on 8 March 2018. Retrieved 8 March 2018.
10. "The Kiwi brain behind the Paris Olympic's medal per capita tally". RNZ. 12 August 2024. Retrieved 12 August 2024.

External links

• University of Canterbury graduate profile