New member of the US National Academy of Engineering

The American National Academy of Engineering (NAE) announced the admission this month of 106 new members and 23 international (non-American) members, including Dr. Yoelle Maarek, a graduate of the Taub Faculty of Computer Science at the Technion, who is now Vice President of Research at Alexa Shopping at Amazon 

Dr. Yoelle Maarek

Technion alumnus Dr. Yoelle Maarek grew up in France, and after gaining an engineering degree from the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris, she went on to earn her Ph.D. in computer science from the Technion in Israel. Since then, she has maintained strong connections with the Technion, and today, she is an ACM Fellow, as well as a member of the Technion Board of Governors and management council.

At Amazon, Maarek leads teams across the US, UK, and Israel in advancing voice search, question answering, and conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI). In particular, she focuses on the shopping domain and is investigating new research areas such as computational humor, which she sees as one of the hardest existing AI challenges. Dr. Maarek has regularly served as program committee (PC) chair and senior PC committee member at leading academic research conferences such as SIGIR, The Web Conference, and Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM).

Maarek, who currently lives in Haifa, is being recognized by the NAE for her: “Contributions to online information retrieval and data management, and leadership in applied industrial research.”

“I am honored and humbled to be recognized by the NAE and to join such a prestigious community,” said Maarek. “I look forward to collaborating with other engineers and scientists in order to continue doing what I’ve loved doing throughout my career – leveraging science and technology to facilitate the lives of people across the world and hopefully delight them.”

“The appointment of Dr. Maarek to the NAE shows important international recognition and an outstanding personal achievement,” said Technion President Prof. Uri Sivan. “As a member of the Technion management council and Board of Governors, she contributes a lot of time and energy to the Faculty of Computer Science and to the Technion and is an important ambassador in strengthening ties between academia and hi-tech industry in Israel and worldwide. As one of the leading Israeli women in the hi-tech world, she encourages male and female students to commit themselves to study and to gain advanced degrees that will give them added value in the industry. Dr. Maarek is an example and a source of inspiration to young female students who take an interest in science and technology, and with her words and deeds, she proves there is no ceiling they cannot break. We congratulate Dr. Maarek and are blessed by her accomplishments.”