Peter Norvig

Known most for his expertise in Artificial Intelligence, exemplified by his co-authorship (with Stuart Russell) of the leading college text, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (1995). He has extensive publications and a plethora of web pages, essays, and software programs on topics from programming languages, to natural language processing, to education. He remains a hands-on scientist who writes his own programs, and is also a leader: He headed the 200-person Computational Sciences Division of NASA Ames. As a first-200 Google employee and Director of Search Quality, he catalyzed many contributions, including the scaling of Google search, Google's response to Spam, and much more rapid Web indexing. As Google Director of Research, he initiated Google's research in automated translation (now, Google Translate) and cloud-based speech recognition: both efforts have been exceptionally successful. He catalyzed massively open online courses (MOOC) via well-known courses on Artificial Intelligence (taught with Sebastian Thrun) and The Design of Computer Programs. This work led to a front page article in The New York Times and helped turbocharge two companies (Coursera, Udacity) as well as MITx/edX.