Googlers

Google Presenter Bios
David Thau Manager of Developer Relations, Earth Engine and Earth Outreach
Dave Thau is the manager of developer relations for Google Earth Engine and Google Earth Outreach. He has created, and managed software development for, Webby Award winning websites, written a best-selling computer science textbook that has been translated into nine languages, and published scholarly papers in the field of data management. He joined Google in 2010, bringing with him 20 years of industry experience developing Internet-based applications with a focus on large image databases, geospatial systems, ecology and biodiversity. Thau holds degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a PhD in computer science from the University of California, Davis.
 
Tyler Erickson Senior Developer Advocate, Google Earth Engine
Tyler focuses primarily on supporting Earth Engine partners who are working on water and climate analyses and the Python API. Prior to joining Google, he worked in academia and served as the Chair of the Technical Committee for AmericaView, a non-profit nationwide partnership of remote sensing scientists. Dr. Erickson holds graduate degrees in Civil and Environmental Engineering and in Geography from the California Institute of Technology, Stanford University, and the University of Colorado. His research has focused on water resources, particularly in the cryosphere, and on geostatistics for integrating geospatiotemporal environmental data across observational platforms.
 
Nick Clinton Developer Advocate, Google Earth Engine
Nick Clinton is on the Earth Engine developer relations team. He received a bachelors, masters and PhD from the department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at UC Berkeley. From 2008-2011, Nick worked in the Airborne Sensor Facility of NASA Ames Research Center, producing science quality calibrated imagery and supporting sensor maintenance for thermal, multispectral and hyperspectral imagers. From 2012-2015, he was on the faculty of the Center for Earth System Science at Tsinghua University, in Beijing, China. He joined Google in 2015.
 
John Bailey PgM Google Geo Education
Dr. John Bailey is a former volcanologist turned Googler who is English by birth, American by choice, and “could be from anywhere” based on his accent. As an undergraduate he studying physics & space science at the University of Kent at Canterbury and Penn State University, but decided there were limited fieldwork opportunities in space. So he switched to the far safer field of volcanology & remote sensing, moving to Hawaii to complete a MS and PhD. To balance the years in the tropics, fate then decided to send John to Alaska as a postdoc with the Alaska Volcano Observatory at the the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Finally after almost two decades in academia he decided he needed a new challenge and joined the Google Earth Outreach team as Program Manager for Geo Education. John loves to travel and explore new places and landscapes for himself. To date he has visited over fifty countries on six continents and will visit his seventh later this year. His goal is to teach knowledge, understanding and stewardship of the planet we live on through the use of Google’s Geo tools and other innovative technologies.
 
Karin Tuxen-Bettman Program Manager, Google Earth Outreach
Karin has been with Google since early 2008, and has since worked on the Google Earth Outreach team, helping nonprofit and public benefit organizations use Google's mapping tools for their work. Karin's background includes work in GIS and remote sensing technologies, which she applied to her PhD in environmental sciences, received from the University of California, Berkeley. Since joining Google, she has trained numerous nonprofits to using the Street View Trekker backpack to collect imagery of the ecosystems they are working to conserve. More recently, she led the effort at Google to measure air quality using Street View cars, through a partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund.
 
Tanya Birch Program Manager, Google Earth Outreach
Tanya Birch is a Program Manager at Google Earth Outreach. She studied Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and has been part of Google Earth Outreach since 2007 and at Google since 2003. Prior to Google, she researched human elephant conflict with the Sri Lanka Wildlife Conservation Society. At Google, she established the Grants program and now focuses on using Android mobile technology to collect and map field data.
 
Christiaan Adams Developer Advocate, Google Earth Outreach
Christiaan is a Developer Advocate, GIS specialist, and KML designer with the Google Earth Outreach team, where he helps nonprofits to use Google's online mapping tools to tell their stories, visualize their data, and share their work work with the world. Christiaan focuses on working with Crisis Response and Conservation organizations. His background is in Environmental Engineering, Technology Policy, GIS and international development. When he's not playing with digital maps, Christiaan can be found mountain biking, hiking, or "fixing" things in his workshop.
 
Allie Lieber Program Manager, Google Earth Outreach
Allie Lieber is a program manager on the Google Earth Outreach team. She manages the software grants program and is now focusing on health mapping.
 
Vanessa Schneider Geo Media Program Manager
Vanessa coordinates media outreach efforts as a program manager for Google’s Geo organization. She works closely with media professionals around the world using Google Maps and Google Earth for research and storytelling. Previously, Vanessa worked at The New York Times, Time Inc., and at New York startup Hot Potato, acquired by Facebook in 2010. Vanessa earned bachelor's degrees in both Journalism and Culture and Communication from Ithaca College.
 
Max Heinritz Software Engineer, Google Earth Engine 
Max is a software engineer on the Earth Engine Playground frontend. He's worked on charts, the code suggestion tool, and the client libraries.
 
Noel Gorelick Chief Extraterrestrial Observer
Noel is one of the founders of Google Earth Engine, and an author of Google Moon and Google Mars. Prior to Google, he worked on 6 NASA Mars missions and the Cassini mission to Saturn as well as several terrestrial hyper-spectral sensors and analysis systems.
 
Peter Birch Product Manager, Google Earth Engine
Peter has been at Google for 9 years, most recently as Product Manager for Google Earth Engine, Google’s cloud-based geospatial analysis platform. Previously at Google, Peter was Product Manager for the Google Earth product family, Google's 3D Earth visualization tools that combines the power of Google Search with satellite imagery, maps, terrain and 3D buildings.
 
Raleigh Seamster Program Manager, Google Earth Outreach
Raleigh helps nonprofits use Google's mapping tools through organizing trainings like the Geo for Good User Summit, figuring out how to bring our program to new countries like Canada & Australia, and other projects. She has been with the Google Earth Outreach team for 5 years and at Google for almost 8 years. Before Google, Raleigh served as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in Ukraine, worked at the nonprofit American Councils for International Education, and studied cultural anthropology at James Madison University.
 
Andrew Chang Software Engineer, Google Earth Engine
Andrew has been working on the Earth Engine's GUI and API, helping to bring exports and search to the Playground. You might also find him at Geo Education events assisting educators with Google's tools.
 
Michael DeWitt Software Engineer, Google Earth Engine 
Michael has spent two years contributing to Earth Engine's backend functionality (adding vector export, resizable convolution kernels, and behind-the-scenes magic). He graduated with bachelor's degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Maryland, College Park.
 
Simon Ilyushchenko Climate Reliability Engineer
Simon has been at Google for 9 years. He started as an SRE (Site Reliability Engineer) on Google's storage infrastructure, and then later joined the Earth Engine team just as it was being formed, working primarily on data ingestion.
 
Jeff Beis Software Engineer, Google Earth Engine
Jeff has been with Earth Engine since the start of 2015, working on impementing new algorithms for the Earth Engine platform.
 
Max Shawabkeh Tech Lead, Playground
Max has been with Earth Engine for 4 years, first working on the query execution service, and now leading the Playground effort.
 
Igor Nazarenko Tech Lead, Earth Engine Backend
Igor has worked on Earth Engine team for 2.5 years, starting with image export.
 
Brian Sullivan Program Manager, Google Ocean & Earth Outreach
Brian has been at Google since 2007 with recent projects spanning from developing Global Fishing Watch, adding to our streetview program in remote and underwater regions, partner trainings and consultations, and public speaking engagements. Earlier in his career, he focused on business intelligence and strategic partnerships at Google, served as a management consultant in financial services, and managed digital divide programs in West Africa. His love of technology is tempered with the opposing and complementary need to spend time in nature.

Google Geo Leadership
Luc Vincent Engineering Director, Geo Imagery
Luc Vincent joined Google a decade ago to work on the Google Books project. While he was ramping up Google's OCR efforts, he got involved in an early stage project whose goal was to capture a large amount of street level imagery and make it universally accessible and useful. Under Luc's leadership, this project became Google Street View and launched officially in May 2007. Since then, Luc's scope has expanded to include imagery captured from a range of sources, including people on the ground, airplanes, satellites, and more. He is currently an engineering director responsible for all Geo Imagery in Google's products. His team is focused on making all this imagery data and derived information broadly useful to users around the world, from end-users on a mobile phone to geo scientists researching climate change.

Before Google, Luc spent many years at Xerox Corporation, including a stint as Area Manager at the prestigious Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). He also worked for a while in startup-land, with mixed success. Luc holds dozens of patents and has over 60 publications in the area of computer vision and image analysis. He has served as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI), and for the Journal of Electronic Imaging. He has also chaired a number of IEEE, SPIE, and ISMM conferences and been invited as a keynote speaker on countless occasions.

Luc earned his B.S. from Ecole Polytechnique (France), M.S. in Computer Science from University of Paris XI, and PhD in Mathematical Morphology from Ecole des Mines de Paris. He was also a postdoc in the Division of Applied Sciences of Harvard University in 1991.
 
Rebecca Moore Engineering Manager, Google Earth Outreach and Earth Engine
Rebecca Moore is a computer scientist and longtime software professional. At Google, she conceived and leads the Google Earth Outreach program, which supports nonprofits, communities and indigenous peoples around the world in applying Google's mapping tools to the world's pressing problems in areas such as environmental conservation, human rights and cultural preservation. Rebecca also initiated and leads the development of Google Earth Engine, a new technology platform which supports global-scale monitoring and protection of the earth’s environment. Rebecca received a bachelor’s degree with honors from Brown University in Artificial Intelligence and a master’s degree from Stanford University. Her personal work using Google Earth was instrumental in stopping the logging of more than a thousand acres of redwoods in her Santa Cruz Mountain community.