Organizing the World’s Information: Google’s Vision for the 21st Century

On October 26, 2006, the HSL, in partnership with the UNC School of Information and Library Science, was honored to welcome Craig Silverstein from Google. The talk included a panel discussion and questions from the audience

Craig Silverstein

Craig Silverstein was the first employee hired by Google’s founders and created many of the original IT components to support Google’s deployment and growth. Silverstein is currently on leave from Stanford University, where he is pursuing a Ph.D. in computer science, with a focus on information retrieval and data mining. Silverstein contributed his expertise in compression algorithms to Google while it was still a research project at Stanford. His other academic pursuits include super-efficient versions of basic data structures such as hash tables as well as efficient clustering of large data sets using Scatter/Gather and latent semantic indexing as it relates to clustering, which he explored at Xerox PARC.

Silverstein graduated with honors with a bachelor of science degree in computer science from Harvard College, from which he also received Phi Beta Kappa distinction, the Microsoft Technical Scholarship, and twice received the Derek Bok Award for Teaching Excellence.

Panelists for the Event

From left to right:

• Fred Stutzman, Ph.D. – Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University
• Barbara K. Rimer, DrPH – Dean, Gillings School of Global Public Health, UNC-Chapel Hill
• José-Marie Griffiths, Ph.D. – Vice President of Academic Affairs, Bryant University
• Carol Jenkins – Former Director, Health Sciences Library, UNC-Chapel Hill
• Craig Silverstein
• Paul Jones – Director, ibiblio.org, UNC-Chapel Hill

Videos from the Event

Video of the event is available on YouTube.