Kalev Hannes Leetaru is an American internet entrepreneur, academic, and senior fellow at the

George Washington University School of Engineering and Applied Science The School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. is a technical school which specializes in engineering, technology, communications, and transportation. The school is located on the main ...

Center for Cyber & Homeland Security in

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

He was a former

Yahoo! Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...

Fellow in Residence of International Values, Communications Technology & the Global Internet at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private Jesuit research university in Washington, D.C., United States. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic higher education, Ca ...

, before moving to

George Washington University The George Washington University (GW or GWU) is a Private university, private University charter#Federal, federally-chartered research university in Washington, D.C., United States. Originally named Columbian College, it was chartered in 1821 by ...

Biography

Born to Hannes and Marilyn Leetaru, Leetaru co-founded a web company in 1995 while in middle school. His first product was a web authoring suite. (During this time, websites were still built directly into HTML and

content management system A content management system (CMS) is computer software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content ( content management).''Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy''. Ann Rockley, Pamela Kostur, Steve Manning. New ...

s; Javascript, and CSS were not used widely.) In 2000, while an undergraduate at the

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC, U of I, Illinois, or University of Illinois) is a public land-grant research university in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area, Illinois, United States. Established in 1867, it is the f ...

, Leetaru joined the

National Center for Supercomputing Applications The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) is a unit of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and provides high-performance computing resources to researchers in the United States. NCSA is currently led by Professor Bill ...

there. Leetaru's undergraduate thesis was a history of the University of Illinois and formed the basis for the University of Illinois Histories Project. After finishing his undergraduate studies, Leetaru continued working at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and held positions at the Institute for Computing in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences and the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the university. In 2013, he started as a

Fellow in Residence at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at

, and in 2014, he was appointed adjunct assistant professor at the university. Leetaru's research has focused on the use of big data and networks and their utility in prediction, including analyses of

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

, and geopolitical events. Leetaru is best known for his role as the co-creator of the

Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone The GDELT Project, or Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone, created by Kalev Leetaru of Yahoo! and Georgetown University, along with Philip Schrodt and others, describes itself as "an initiative to construct a catalog of human societal-sc ...

(GDELT) with Philip Schrodt. He currently maintains the database and the underlying code.

Media coverage

Leetaru is a contributor to ''

Foreign Policy Foreign policy, also known as external policy, is the set of strategies and actions a State (polity), state employs in its interactions with other states, unions, and international entities. It encompasses a wide range of objectives, includ ...

'', where he discusses current political events worldwide, often drawing from GDELT data for his analyses. Leetaru's analysis of the relationships between articles on

, sponsored by

Silicon Graphics International Silicon Graphics International Corp. (SGI; formerly Rackable Systems, Inc.) was an American manufacturer of computer hardware and software, including high-performance computing systems, x86-based servers for datacenter deployment, and visuali ...

, was covered in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

''. He has also been cited in ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...

'' in an article about

usage. He has been cited in ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...

'' in connection with GDELT and as an expert on foreign affairs.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Leetaru, Kalev Grainger College of Engineering alumni Walsh School of Foreign Service faculty Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) Living people American people of Estonian descent Yahoo! people George Washington University faculty University of Illinois School of Information Sciences alumni