For Everyone

Wieland Holfelder. Google Germany GmbH, Germany

Abstract: As Sir Tim Berners-Lee famously said, the internet is “for everyone.” This ties in with Google’s mission to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Google’s goal will always be to make useful products that improve people’s everyday lives — and help tackle larger problems in the world too. This talk will give an overview of why building “for everyone” is at the heart and core of how we operate and why it touches so many areas Google works on, from education, to research, to entrepreneurs, to businesses, to products. The talk will then focus on the research side and how some of the recent advances we have seen and worked on in Machine Learning are making so many of Google’s products even more useful for everyone.

Bio: Dr. Wieland Holfelder joined Google in 2008 and oversees Google’s engineering center in Germany where Google now employs more than 400 software engineers, many of which focus on privacy and security for Google products worldwide. Prior to Google, Wieland Holfelder was Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Mercedes-Benz Research and Technology North America, Inc. in Silicon Valley. Previously, he worked for ICAST Corporation and FVC.com, two Internet startup companies in the area of streaming video. As part of his Ph.D. research, Wieland worked at IBM’s European Networking Center in Heidelberg, Germany and the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, CA. He holds a master’s in computer science and economics and a doctorate in computer science from the University of Mannheim, Germany.

In addition, Dr. Holfelder is a member of the senate of acatech, the German national academy of science and engineering (www.acatech.de/uk), a member of the board of Deutschland sicher im Netz (www.sicher-im-netz.de/pages/about-dsin), a member of the board of trustees of the Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (www.hiig.de/en), a membore of the supervisory board of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (www.dfki.de), a member of the board of the Deutsches Museum (www.deutsches-museum.de), and a member of the research council of the Münchner Kreis (www.muenchner-kreis.de/en).