(4 March 2008 9:00 pm)

MUMBAI: Yahoo Inc. has announced the expansion of its India R&D operations with the launch of Yahoo Labs - Bangalore, its first in India. Dr. Rajeev Rastogi has been appointed as vice president and head of the new lab.

Yahoo Labs - Bangalore will be focused on making the web more relevant and simple for users and advertisers. Rastogi is appointed to assemble a team of scientists and engineers to focus on new approaches to information extraction and machine learning, multimedia and query processing.

"Yahoo Labs - Bangalore intends to build its team, which is focused on delivering the most valuable insights and leading edge technologies to delight all of our customers worldwide," said Yahoo Research head SVP Dr. Prabhakar Raghavan. "Rajeev's background and expertise in product development, as well as his deep experience in research will strengthen our leadership in international research and technology and leverage knowledge from across the region."

Prior to Yahoo, Rastogi was the founding director of Bell Labs India. Currently, he sits on the editorial board of Communications for the Association for Computing Machinery (CACM). Rastogi has published over 125 papers on database systems and information storage and management and holds over 40 patents.

Rastogi added, "I plan to draw on my experiences in the areas of database systems, data mining and network management to help the team tackle some of the toughest problems on the Web."

"We believe Yahoo Labs - Bangalore will play a critical role in driving the next wave of innovation on the Internet," said Yahoo India R&D CEO Sharad Sharma.