Eric Glover Ph.D.
E-mail: eric_rez3@ericglover.com,
Web: http://www.ericglover.com/
Career Objective:
A senior-level technical/management position, where I am able
to use my broad experience industry and academic experience to
lead a team or company towards developing effective, advanced,
high-valued technology.
Highlights:
- Classification architect at a Search Engine startup, where I lead the design of core classification technology
- At Ask.com, I defined and created multiple core search, entity-extraction and
classification-related technologies used by millions of users every day
- Lead a team of engineers to develop and implement internal
infrastructure products for improved management of structured data,
classification, and data mining
- Managed a team of several programmers and students to develop a
modular enterprise search technology architecture and demonstration
system capable of learning new categories in minutes, and performing
category-specific search over a variety of (unstructured) data sources.
- PhD in CSE/AI, focusing on preference-based web metasearch
- Developed a prototype enterprise search system (Inquirus). This
system incorporated many new technologies including: rapid category
learning (active learning based), advanced feature selection,
SVM-based classification, automated query
modifications, intelligent resource routing, multiple-source
capabilities, automated query expansion, and search strategies
- Published several highly cited conference and journal
papers, as well as filed five patent applications related to data
mining/topic extraction, search engine architectures, and search
technologies.
- Broad knowledge of computer science/AI, including algorithms,
software, and hardware (a master's degree in VLSI)
- Ability to think outside the box and solve
very difficult problems in a variety of fields (both hardware and
software)
Research/Expertise Area
Large scale classification (predicting what genere/category/area a particular web page belongs to) has
often been plagued by low accuracy, high-costs to create multiple classifiers, and high computational costs
to train and classify. My current focus on improving upon academic methods and making them viable for real-world
business needs.
I am also interested in leveraging large data to improve the effectiveness of search systems. How do you find the
small patterns among terabytes of data to help personalize a user's experience?
In addition to my work-related persuits, I am interested in issues of personal information and data
security, privacy and reliability. I have found security holes or
potential security risks in Windows and the popular Hotmail service (http://tinyurl.com/3575u
). I am also interested in data communication, efficient
algorithms, hardware (design, power, efficiency).
Education
4/1994 BSE Electrical Engineering, Magna Cum Laude from University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
5/1997 MSE Electrical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor,
MI
8/2001 Ph.D. Computer Science Engineering, University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, MI (my dissertation)
Dissertation:
Eric J. Glover, Using Extra-Topical User Preferences to Improve
Web-Based Metasearch, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Michigan,
2001. PDF
Employment
3/2007 - Present - Classification Architect/Sr. Staff Scientist at SearchMe.com
Responsible for the design (architecture and algorithms) and implementation of large-scale, high-accuracy web classification technology.
2/2007 - 3/2007 - Manager (3) at Ask.com
Managed four engineers, playing an active role
in design and development of new technologies in the areas of classification, entity extraction, relevance, and structured data
management.
5/2004 - 2/2007 - Research Engineer (Software Engineer 5) at Ask.com
(IAC Search and Media formerly AskJeeves)
Recent work included leading a small
team of engineers to develop multiple internal products in the areas of
extraction, machine learning, and structured data management. Focus
included large-scale processing and analysis, highly-accurate
classification, and efficient algorithms. Previous work within ask
included developing highly visible, very high impact core technologies
- currently on the live site. Core technologies are in the areas of
entity extraction/classification, information extraction from
semi-structured data (including the Wikipedia), relevance and
disambiguation.
11/2002 - 4/2004 - Research Staff Member at NEC Laboratories America -
Project leader of the Inquirus project
I managed a team of three
full-time programmers/developers and several students, and participated
in several outside collaborations. I was responsible for creating new
research ideas and
communicating it to the development team for incorporation into our
Inquirus search system - implemented primarily in C++. The (new)
Inquirus search system is a modular architecture (several patents filed
on various aspects of the system) that included dynamic routing of
search resources (query processing, result processing and data
resources). Several demonstration systems were built, including a
MEDLINE based demo system demonstrating high-precision and high recall
for test medical queries. A second
demonstration system included built-in active learning for very rapid
category generation. An outside user (using the entirely web-based
interface) could train a custom search category (such as "Movie
Reviews", "Computer Science Papers", "Clinical Trials", "Executive
Bios", and others) in minutes. At project termination, the search
architecture included the ability to search in Japanese (including
proper word splitting), and process inbound datasources in multiple
encodings.
Research
and technology highlights of the Inquirus project: System
utilized a new technology we invented called search strategies. Very
fast active learning for improved category creation. Efficient SVM
based classification. Real-time feature ranking and feature selection.
System
included modules for various data interfaces (including Web, Oracle,
MySQL, Z39.50). Multi-language/character encoding technology (Japanese
term extraction using Chasen).
Relevant
research: Automated methods for local hierarchy generation from
small document clusters. New methods for predicting
the generality or specificity of a document (improves relevance).
Technology for automatic discovery of
related medical concepts. Use of web structure to
improve classification accuracy and concept naming. Demonstrated
effective use of uncertainty sampling
with SVMs and use of
web structure (extended anchortext/anchortext windows) for extremely
accurate Yahoo document classification.
New method for web-graph modeling, incorporating local web communities.
New technology for improved
phrasal/concept extraction and concept grouping.
7/2001 - 10/2002 : Scientist at the NEC Laboratories America (formerly
named
NEC Research Institute), Princeton, NJ
Worked with Steve Lawrence, Gary Flake*
and C. Lee Giles* on improving
metasearch, and data mining. Continued dissertation work and developed
new methods for feature extraction/selection, and improved document
classification. Continued work on the Inquirus 2 prototype, and
participated in various research activities related to data mining.
*Gary and Lee left the laboratory prior to October 2002.
1/1999 - 6/2001: Intern at NEC Research Institute, Princeton, NJ
Collaborating with C. Lee Giles, Gary
Flake and Steve Lawrence on
improving and modeling
web metasearch. Involved in implementing a content-based metasearch
engine
that
considered more than just keywords . For more detailed information
please
refer to the publications below.
9/1998 - 12/1998: CAD GSI, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Duties: Responsible for assisting
students with CAD related
questions or
problems. Supported: Mentor Graphics suite (Design Architect, Quicksim,
Accusim,
IC Station, Design Veiwpoint Editor), EPOCH, Synopsys, Verilog XL,
SignalScan.
Significant accomplishments include re-writing of the digital
transistor
models for the VLSI class. Helped to debug and prevent software
problems.
1/1995 - 8/1998: Graduate Student Research Assistant for the
University
of
Michigan Digital Library (UMDL) project, University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor,
MI
Designed and prototyped multiple software
agents including the
Remora, WebAgent, and the Preference Agent. UMDL agents were written
primarily in
C++. Agents were developed in the CORBA framework under SOLARIS, and
required
extensive use of the Web. Wrote numerous CGI scripts in PERL, as well
as
other tools including web robots which automatically downloaded and
analyzed
web pages.
UMDL research focused on a distributed AI
(agent) architecture as a
basis
for a multi-purpose digital library. Library functions included
searching (both across and inside of) collections, document retrieval,
electronic commerce
and pricing, user interface and preferences. The UMDL project was used
to
provide content to local middle school and high school children as part
of
their science curriculum.
9/1994 - 12/1994: CAD Graduate Student Instructor (GSI), University
of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Duties: Responsible for assisting
students from many Electrical
Engineering classes in using the Mentor Graphics tool set. Aided
students in using Design
Architect, IC Station, Accusim, Quicksim and HSPICE. Responsibilities
included
problem solving and basic circuit debugging.
Publications:
Eric J. Glover, David M. Pennock, Steve Lawrence, and Robert Krovetz. Inferring
hierarchical descriptions, Proceedings of the Eleventh
International Conference
on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM'02), November 2002. PS
David M. Pennock, Sandip Debnath, Eric J. Glover, and C. Lee Giles. Modeling
information incorporation in markets with application to detecting and
explaining
events, Proceedings of the 18th Conference on Uncertainty in
Artificial
Intelligence (UAI-2002), pp. 405-413, August 2002. PS
| PDF
Eric J. Glover, Kostas Tsioutsiouliklis, Steve Lawrence, David M.
Pennock, and Gary W. Flake. Using web structure for classifying and
describing web
pages, Proceedings of the Eleventh International World Wide Web
Conference,
pp. 562-569, May 2002. PS | PDF | HTML
Gary Flake, Eric Glover, Steve Lawrence, C. Lee Giles Extracting
Query
Modifications from Nonlinear SVMs , Proceedings of the Eleventh
International
World Wide Web Conference, May 2002. HTML
PS.Z
PS.gz
PS
PDF
BibTeX
©
David M.
Pennock, Gary
W. Flake, Steve
Lawrence, Eric J. Glover,
and C. Lee Giles. Winners
don't take
all: Characterizing the competition for links on the web, Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS),
Volume 99, Issue 8, pp. 5207-5211, April 2002. PS
| PDF
| abstract
| HTML | more info
Steve Lawrence, David M. Pennock,
Gary William Flake,
Robert Krovetz,
Frans M. Coetzee,
Eric Glover, Finn Årup
Nielsen,
Andries Kruger, and C. Lee Giles.
Persistence of web references in scientific research. Computer, 34(2): 26-31,
2001
PS
| PDF
Steve Lawrence, Frans Coetzee, Eric Glover, David Pennock, Gary Flake,
Finn
Nielsen, Robert Krovetz, Andries Kruger, and C. Lee Giles.
Persistence of Web References in Scientific Research, IEEE Computer,
vol 34, no 2, pp
26--31, 2001
Eric J. Glover, Gary W. Flake, Steve Lawrence, William P.
Birmingham, Andries
Kruger, C. Lee Giles, David M. Pennock. Improving
Category Specific Web
Search by Learning Query Modifications, Symposium on
Applications and the Internet, SAINT 2001, San Diego, California,
January 8--12, 2001.
Frans Coetzee, Eric Glover, Steve Lawrence, and C. Lee Giles. Feature
selection in web applications using ROC inflections. In Symposium
on Applications
and the Internet, SAINT, San Diego, CA, January 8--12 2001.
Andries Kruger, C. Lee Giles, Frans Coetzee, Eric Glover, Gary
Flake, Steve
Lawrence, and Cristian Omlin. DEADLINER: Building a new niche
search engine.
In Ninth International Conference on Information and Knowledge
Management,
CIKM 2000, Washington, DC, November 6-- 11 2000.
Eric J. Glover, Steve Lawrence, Michael D. Gordon, William P.
Birmingham, C. Lee Giles, "Web
Search
-- Your Way," Accepted to Communications of the ACM
Eric J. Glover, Steve Lawrence, William P. Birmingham, C. Lee Giles,
"Architecture
of a Metasearch Engine that Supports User Information Needs,"
Eighth International
Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM 99), Kansas
City,
MO, November, 1999
Eric J. Glover, Steve Lawrence, Michael D. Gordon, William P.
Birmingham, C. Lee Giles, "Recommending
Web Documents Based on User Preferences," in ACM SIGIR 99
Workshop
on Recommender Systems, Berkeley, CA, August, 1999
E. J. Glover, S.R. Lawrence, K.D. Bollacker, C.L. Giles, W.P.
Birmingham, G.W. Flake, "A Metasearch Engine Architecture That Supports
Individual Information
Needs," NEC Research Institute Technical Report, TR# 99-063, May 13,
1999
E. J. Glover, W. P. Birmingham, and M. D. Gordon, "Improving Web
Search Using Utility Theory," in Proceedings of the First International
Workshop on Web Information and Data Management, WIDM 98. Bethesda,
Maryland, 1998
Eric J. Glover, Sunju Park, Anil Arora, Daniel Kiskis and Edmund
Durfee, "A case study on the evolution of software tools selection and
development in a large-scale multi-agent system," in Workshop on
Software Tools for Developing
Agents, AAAI 1998. Madison, WI: AAAI
E. J. Glover and W. P. Birmingham, "Using Decision Theory To Order
Documents," in Digital Libraries 98, Pittsburgh, PA, 1998: ACM
D. E. Atkins, W. P. Birmingham, E. H. Durfee, E. J. Glover, T.
Mullen, E. A. Rundensteiner, E. Soloway, J. M. Vidal, R. Wallace, and
M. P. Wellman, "Toward Inquiry-Based Education Through Interacting
Software Agents," IEEE Computer, vol. 29, pp. 69-76, 1996
Patents:
Filed more than seven patents including those related to entity
detection/extraction, search architectures,
efficient data mining, medical concept extraction/relationship
discovery, improved metasearch performance, automatic hierarchy
generation and document cluster naming, improved document
classification techniques using web structure.
Hobbies
Digital photography, traveling, cooking, hacking (the good kind)
computer
security, and online gaming.
last updated: June 24, 2007