Craig Nevill Manning - Engineering Creativity in Silicon Valley, New York, and Christchurch

Date: Tuesday 5 June 2012
Time: 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Location: Undercroft, ground floor of the James Hight Building, University of Canterbury
Contact: For further information regarding this event, please contact Jayne Austin by sending email to jayne.austin@canterbury.ac.nz or by calling +64 3 364 2916
Audience: The general public

Topic:

Past, present future: Silicon Valley has been a centre of technology innovation for decades. New York recently became the second-largest tech hub in the United States. What lessons do Silicon Valley and New York hold for accelerating the tech industry in Christchurch? From individual entrepreneurs and engineers, to schools and universities, to local and national government, a vibrant tech scene is the result of many actions, large and small. This talk will review some of the success stories and attempt to identify some useful strategies for Christchurch.

No RSVPs, come early to be certain of a seat

Bio:

Dr Craig Nevill-Manning founded Google’s first remote engineering centre, located in downtown Manhattan. In his role as Engineering Director, he has overseen the development of products including Google Local (now Maps) and Froogle (now Product Search), as well as features of web search such as Question Answering and Web Definitions. Most recently, he directed Google.org’s Flu Trends and Crisis Response projects, providing maps, imagery and a missing person’s service after crises in Christchurch and elsewhere.

Prior to joining Google in 2000, he was an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Rutgers University, and a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Biochemistry Department at Stanford University. He is the author of 44 peer-reviewed academic publications, and was awarded a Career Grant by the National Science Foundation for work combining information retrieval and computational biology. A native of New Zealand, he earned a BSc in Computer Science from Canterbury University and a PhD in Computer Science from Waikato University.

Dr Nevill-Manning, Google New York, is visiting New Zealand as keynote speaker for the Transit of Venus Forum. He is making a special trip to Christchurch to present this public talk on the eve of the Transit, courtesy of the University of Canterbury, The Press and the NZ Manufacturers and Exporters Assn.

Enquiries to jayne.austin@canterbury.ac.nz