Technical Yahoo! at Yahoo!
San Francisco Bay Area
- Current
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- Technical Yahoo! at Yahoo!
- Senior Engineering Manager at Yahoo!, Inc.
- Past
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- Technical Yahoo! at Yahoo!
- Senior Software Engineer at IBM Almaden Research Center
- Internship at IBM Informationssysteme GmbH
- Education
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- University of California, Santa Cruz
- UC Santa Cruz
- Stanford University
- Fachhochschule Giessen-Friedberg
- University of Central Lancashire
- Recommended
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5 people have recommended Reiner - Connections
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343
connections
- Industry
- Online Media
- Websites
Reiner Kraft’s Summary
Reiner is a technologist and innovator, working at Yahoo! in Sunnyvale, CA. During the past three years he managed engineering teams working on cutting edge search technology. His most recent project "Yahoo! Glue - http://glue.yahoo.com" explores the automatic compilation of dynamic topic pages (http://glue.yahoo.com). Before that Reiner was instrumental in conceiving and delivering “Contextual Shortcuts”, a product that provides relevant contextual search results at the point of inspiration. He took his original idea of YQ Search and turned it within a short time-frame into a successful product that is now being used by millions of users on a daily basis within Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! News.
Reiner worked at the IBM Almaden Research Center for many years as a senior research software engineer. Reiner was a key contributor and engineer of IBM's OmniFind enterprise search product, and worked on many other search and web related technologies.
One of Reiner's key strength is innovation and idea generation: He filed over 115 patent applications and continuously contributed many valuable ideas to IBM's and Yahoo!'s patent portfolio. In 2003 he has been recognized as a Master Inventor within IBM's research division -- the highest achievable honor and recognition for individual contributors. He had been also recognized by Silicon Valley Magazine to be one of the most prolific inventors in Silicon Valley. Furthermore, Reiner has been recognized with the TR100 award from MIT Technology Review in 2002, a prestigious award for recognizing individuals for extraordinary innovation and impact to our society.
Reiner earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UC Santa Cruz. His thesis advisor was Prof. Raymie Stata. Reiner published several research papers over the past years that were accepted at top conferences within the area of information retrieval and data mining. His current research interests are within the area of contextual search and semantic Web.
Reiner Kraft’s Specialties:
- Think outside the box!
- Constant desire to achieve more, tackle new tasks and challenges, satisfaction and pleasure in achieving goals
- Highly focused, results and goals oriented, like to get things done
- Strong analytical thinking skills
- Love the process of learning to further improve my skills and knowledge
- Strategic thinking
- Accustomed to being in positions of responsibility
Reiner Kraft’s Experience
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Technical Yahoo!
Yahoo!
(Public Company; YHOO; Internet industry)
May 2009 — Present (3 months)
Exploring, inventing, and building next generation of semantic search technologies.
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Senior Engineering Manager
Yahoo!, Inc.
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; YHOO; Internet industry)
January 2006 — Present (3 years 7 months)
I'm a senior engineering manager at Yahoo!, leading two engineering teams within Yahoo!'s Frontdoors organization, and also coordinating engineering and QA teams in India as part of our distributed and global development effort.
We recently launched Yahoo! Glue (http://glue.yahoo.com) - a new experience for discovering the best content of the Web in one place, which had been integrated earlier within India's search experience (http://in.search.yahoo.com/).
While being part of Yahoo!s Web Search team for many years I was focusing on the product "Contextual Shortcuts". The product evolved from Y!Q Contextual Search, which I invented shortly after joining Yahoo!. I took that original idea and turned it within a short time-frame into a successful product that is now being used by millions of users on a daily basis (e.g., in Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News). I built up a strong research and engineering team from sratch, and continue to lead and grow my team. -
Technical Yahoo!
Yahoo!
(Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; yhoo; Online Media industry)
May 2004 — December 2005 (1 year 8 months)
Invented and implemented Y!Q Contextual Search shortly after joining Yahoo!. I took that original idea and turned it within a short time-frame into a successful product that is now being used by millions of users on a daily basis.
Conducted research in the area of contextual search, published papers at CIKM 2005 and WWW 2006. Filed several patent applications. -
Senior Software Engineer
IBM Almaden Research Center
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; ibm; Research industry)
July 1997 — April 2004 (6 years 10 months)
I worked at the IBM Almaden Rearch Center for many years as a senior software engineer, where I conducted research in the area of web information retrieval and search techologies. I was a key contributor and engineer of IBM's OmniFind enterprise search product, where I devised and implemented several algorithms to improve its overall ranking and search quality. My strong engineering and system building skills contributed significantly to the success of this product. In addition, I worked on several other search related projects at IBM. One of them has been recoginized a research accomplishment in 2002.
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Internship
IBM Informationssysteme GmbH
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; IBM; Information Technology and Services industry)
August 1994 — January 1995 (6 months)
During this internship I worked on an knowledge integration and data warehousing project (called "MAGDA"). My focus was on networking and system programming, as well as network administration of an AIX cluster. The goal of this internship (which was part of my undergraduate requirements) was to gain more industry experience.
Reiner Kraft’s Education
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University of California, Santa Cruz
Ph.D. , Computer Science , 2000 — 2004
Was enrolled as a part-time graduate student while working at IBM and Yahoo!
Thesis: Cost-effective Generation of Specialized Search Engines
Advisor: Raymie Stata -
UC Santa Cruz
M.S. , Computer Science , September 2000 — December 2002
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Stanford University
Computer Science 1998 — 1999
Was enrolled as a part-time graduate student while working at IBM Almaden.
Successfully passed graduate level classes and seminars in the area of
- Operating Systems and Systems Programming
- Programming Abstractions and Methodologies
- Human Computer Interaction (HCI)
- Distributed Systems
- Advanced Java / C++ Programming
- Introduction to Automata Theory and Complexity Theory -
Fachhochschule Giessen-Friedberg
B.S. , Computer Science , 1992 — 1997
Thesis: A configurable summarizer for web-based data sources
- Activities and Societies:
- Erasmus Educational Exchange in 1995 with the University of Central Lancashire in Preston, UK.
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University of Central Lancashire
Computer Science 1995 — 1995
Took classes in operating systems, human computer interaction, computer graphics, and C/C++ programming
- Activities and Societies:
- Erasmus Education Exchange for 1 Semester
Additional Information
Reiner Kraft’s Websites:
Reiner Kraft’s Interests:
contextual search, web search, web information retrieval, innovation and idea engineering, entity detection, data mining, semantic Web
Reiner Kraft’s Groups:
ACM
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The Greater IBM Connection: IBM's alumni program for past and present IBM employees -
ACM Members -
Yahoo Employees and Alumni Group -
Jack Baskin School of Engineering at UC Santa Cruz -
PhD graduates -
2009 SemTech: Semantic Technology Conference
Reiner Kraft’s Honors:
- IBM Master Inventor - The highest honor for excellence and innovation that can be achieved within IBM's Research Division (2003).
- IBM Research Invention Achievement Award (Twentieth Plateau)
- TR100, M.I.T. Technology Review
MIT Technology Preview's prestigious award for young innovators under the age of 35 who will shape our future (2002).
- Research Accomplishment Award (IBM Research Division)
Grandcentral Station Project(2002).
- IBM NCSD Teamwork Recognition Award
In recognition for extraordinary cross-organizational teamwork success resulting in achieving key business objectives by cross-organizational synergy, high morale, and increased productivity (1998).
- Yahoo! Patent Milestone Award in recognition of filing 25 patent applications and contributing to Yahoo!'s patent portfolio.
- Who's Who In America, 2009
- Reiner's current list of research papers: http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/k/Kraft:Reiner.html
