Another relevant Lunch Bunch this week

This week the lunch bunch is given by a Caltech alum who was instrumental in developing AdSense!  He'll be talking about one of his new startups -- Factual.  Details below...

HOWARD & JAN ORINGER SEMINAR
**A Special IST Lunch Bunch Event**
Tuesday, February 21st
12:00 - 1:00pm
105 Annenberg

*Lunch will be provided*

A Discussion on Open Source and Open Data

Gil Elbaz
Founder, Factual

Bio:
Gil Elbaz was named a Young Alumni Trustee at Caltech in 2008 and serves on two standing Committees: Institute and Alumni Relations and Student Experience.  He is an accomplished entrepreneur and pioneer of natural-language technology, or converting human language into more formal representations that are easier for computer programs to manipulate. In 1991, he earned his bachelor's degree from Caltech, with a double major in engineering and applied science as well as economics.

After college, Elbaz worked in engineering roles at IBM, Sybase, and SGI. He cofounded Applied Semantics (ASI) in 1998 with fellow Caltech alumnus Adam Weissman (BS '90). ASI helped define and build new addressable markets with its AdSense and other contextual advertising products.  The company was acquired by Google in 2003, at which point Elbaz became director of engineering for Google's Santa Monica office. His work helped establish Google's place as a leader in the field of online advertising.  Elbaz left Google in 2007 to start Los Angeles-based Factual Inc.

Active in a number of nonprofit areas, Elbaz is on the board of trustees for the X Prize Foundation and a member of the Los Angeles Social Ventures Partners.  He and his wife, Elyssa, also manage the Elbaz Family Foundation, supporting environmental and educational causes.

**************

The Oringer Seminars are made possible through the generosity of Howard (MS 1963 EE) and Jan Oringer.  These seminars present scientists and engineers, alumni and key industry leaders in fields related to Information Science and Technology to hear of their experiences and approaches firsthand to convert ideas into knowledge and commercial endeavors. Through these stories of achievement, we aim to inspire our Caltech community, particularly our student body, and to challenge all of us to make a lasting impact on our world.  We acknowledge Howard and Jan Oringer with deep gratitude for their generosity and commitment to Caltech and to its IST initiative.