YHOO: Yahoo! Chief Data Officer, Dr. Usama Fayyad, Chosen as 2006 Fellow by Association of Computing Machinery (ACM)

Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO), a leading global Internet company, today announced that Senior Vice President and Chief Data Officer, Dr. Usama Fayyad, has been chosen as a 2006 Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM). Fayyad was recognized for his extensive contributions to the fields of machine learning and data mining and for his significant scientific and commercial applications in the field of knowledge discovery in databases. As Yahoo!'s chief data officer and senior vice president of research & strategic data solutions, Fayyad is responsible for Yahoo!'s overall data strategy, as well as overseeing the Yahoo! Research organization.

Fayyad is recognized as one of the founders of the field of data mining and knowledge discovery in databases. He was founding editor-in-chief of the primary scientific technical journal in the field for 10 years and was founding editor-in-chief of the ACM Newsletter: SIGKDD Explorations from 1997 to 2002. He has published over 100 technical articles in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Mining, and Databases. He has also chaired several major international conferences in these fields. His record spans basic technical scientific contributions to building products in major systems such as Microsoft SQL Server and other database platforms. Fayyad founded two successful high-tech startups prior to joining Yahoo!'s senior executive team.

In continued demonstration of Yahoo!'s world-class Research team, Fayyad joins three current ACM Fellows at Yahoo!: Ron Brachman, vice president, Yahoo! Research operations; Prabhakar Raghavan, head of Yahoo! Research and Raghu Ramakrishnan, vice president, Yahoo! Research. In addition to Fayyad's honor, newly appointed 2006 ACM Distinguished Scientists from Yahoo! include Jan Pedersen, chief scientist for search and marketplace, and John Tomlin, senior research scientist.

ACM is an educational and scientific society uniting the world's computing educators, researchers and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources and address the field's challenges. The ACM Fellows and Distinguished Scientist programs were both established to recognize outstanding ACM members for technical, professional and leadership contributions.

"Yahoo! Research is focused on hiring the leading researchers around the globe in the fields of search, machine learning, microeconomics, social media, and more," said Fayyad. "We are creating the sciences underlying the next generation of the Internet, and we encourage our researchers to share their findings with the academic community, producing a shared intellectual commons that benefits the entire industry. The recognition we have received in the last year is indicative of the innovative work we are doing."

Other recent recognition for Yahoo! Research includes the Test of Time Award at the 2006 ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data and the 2007 Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award at the annual gathering of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI). Ramakrishnan received the Test of Time Award for a paper he co-authored entitled, "BIRCH: An Efficient Data Clustering Method for Very Large Databases." The Test of Time Award recognizes the best paper from the SIGMOD proceedings ten years prior, based on the criterion of identifying the paper that has had the most impact over the intervening decade.

Finally, Brachman will be awarded the Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award at IJCAI later this month. In keeping with the mission of the IJCAI Distinguished Service Award, Brachman will be recognized for his substantial contributions and extensive service to the field of artificial intelligence throughout his career.