Craig Graham Nevill-Manning (né Nevill) is a New Zealand computer scientist who founded

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

's first remote engineering centre, located in

midtown Manhattan Midtown Manhattan is the central portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan, serving as the city's primary central business district. Midtown is home to some of the city's most prominent buildings, including the Empire State Building, the ...

, where he was an Engineering Director. He also created Froogle (now Google Shopping), a product search engine. He is now Head of Engineering at

Sidewalk Labs Sidewalk Labs LLC was an urban planning and infrastructure subsidiary of Google. Its stated goal was to improve urban infrastructure through technological solutions, and tackle issues such as cost of living, efficient transportation and energy ...

Academic and professional career

Nevill-Manning graduated with a BSc in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

from the

University of Canterbury The University of Canterbury (UC; ; postnominal abbreviation ''Cantuar.'' or ''Cant.'' for ''Cantuariensis'', the Latin name for Canterbury) is a public research university based in Christchurch, New Zealand. It was founded in 1873 as Canterbur ...

. He received his PhD from the

University of Waikato The University of Waikato (), established in 1964, is a Public university, public research university located in Hamilton, New Zealand, Hamilton, New Zealand. An additional campus is located in Tauranga. The university performs research in nume ...

where he was a co-creator of the

Weka The weka, also known as the Māori hen or woodhen (''Gallirallus australis'') is a flightless bird species of the rail family. It is endemic to New Zealand. Some authorities consider it as the only extant member of the genus '' Gallirallus''. ...

machine learning suite and the Greenstone digital library software. His doctoral advisor was

Ian Witten Ian Hugh Witten (4 March 1947 – 5 May 2023) was a computer scientist at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. He was a Chartered Engineer with the Institute of Electrical Engineers. Early life and education Witten was born in Horsham, Susse ...

. In 1994, he invented the

sequitur algorithm Sequitur (or Nevill-Manning–Witten algorithm) is a recursive algorithm developed by Craig Nevill-Manning and Ian H. Witten in 1997 that infers a hierarchical structure (context-free grammar) from a sequence of discrete symbols. The algorithm ope ...

, which uses data compression to infer the structure of a sequence of symbols. Craig was invited to join Google at its formation but declined and then joined a little later on. Prior to joining Google in 2001 as a senior research scientist, he was an assistant professor in the

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

Department at

Rutgers University Rutgers University ( ), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of three campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's C ...

, and was a post-doctoral fellow in the Biochemistry department at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

. His research interests centre on using techniques from

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

data compression In information theory, data compression, source coding, or bit-rate reduction is the process of encoding information using fewer bits than the original representation. Any particular compression is either lossy or lossless. Lossless compressi ...

and

computational biology Computational biology refers to the use of techniques in computer science, data analysis, mathematical modeling and Computer simulation, computational simulations to understand biological systems and relationships. An intersection of computer sci ...

to provide more structured search over information. In 2016, Nevill-Manning joined

Alphabet, Inc. Alphabet Inc. is an American multinational technology conglomerate holding company headquartered in Mountain View, California. Alphabet is the world's third-largest technology company by revenue, after Amazon and Apple, the largest techno ...

subsidiary

as CTO.

Awards

In 2009 he won a World Class New Zealand Award in the Information and Communications category. In 2010 Nevill-Manning received a distinguished alumni award from the University of Waikato.

Community

In his own time Craig manages a website service that puts Olympic glory in proportion. He asks: "Who leads the world in medals when you correct for population? That is, which country wins the most medals per capita?" His site, which is updated daily during the Olympics, provides the answer
Olympic Medals per Capita
Media interest in per-capita statistics typically surround his website each Olympic games.

References

External links

University of Canterbury graduate profile
American computer scientists Google employees Living people New Zealand computer scientists University of Canterbury alumni University of Waikato alumni Rutgers University faculty Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) People educated at Marlborough Boys' College {{Compu-scientist-stub