Leading Google researcher turns prof

Every time you use your iPhone to solve a diabolic Sudoku or to dictate an email while riding your bike, you are using an algorithm implemented by researcher Corinna Cortes.

Prof. Cortes earned a master’s degree in Physics from the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen. Afterwards, she moved to the USA to work as a researcher at the AT&T Bell Labs.

The Labs are a renowned research center, active in many different research areas. They have also been the playground of many Nobel Prize winners and the birthplace of mobile phones, communication satellites and many other hi-tech devices.

Cortes is now the Head of the Google Research Centre in New York, and in March 2011 she became a Professor at the Department of Computer Science (DIKU).

Read interview with Copenhagen’s running google professor here.

Prof teaches computers too

Cortes’ research field is machine learning, which is basically the teaching of computers to classify objects.

Like humans, computers can be educated to recognize the differences and similarities between objects. After training, they are able to learn from their experience and classify objects that they have never seen before.

Prof. Cortes developed the theory of support vector machines, which is currently one of the best tools available in the field. Her research has been awarded with a number of prizes.

Read a wikipedia article on support vector machines here.

Google meets the University of Copenhagen

At Google, Professor Cortes works on her theory and on applications that seem to be limited only by the imagination.

As professor at the Department of Computer Science, she will collaborate with the University’s computer scientists, fostering the flux of ideas and people from Copenhagen to Google, and vice versa.

Read a 2014 interview with Corinna Cortes on the subject of Big Data here.

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