| Birth Date: | 21 March 1961 |
| Birth Place: | Chile |
| Fields: | Computer Science Data Science |
| Workplaces: | Northeastern University NTENT Yahoo! Labs Pompeu Fabra University University of Chile |
| Alma Mater: | University of Waterloo University of Chile |
| Thesis Title: | Efficient Text Searching |
| Thesis Year: | 1989 |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Gaston Gonnet |
| Notable Students: | Gonzalo Navarro |
| Known For: | Shift Or Algorithm |
| Awards: | ACM Fellow IEEE Fellow |
Ricardo A. Baeza-Yates (born March 21, 1961) is a Chilean-Catalan-American computer scientist that currently is the Director of Research of the Institute for Experiential AI at Northeastern University in the Silicon Valley campus. He is also part-time professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona and Universidad de Chile in Santiago. He is an expert member of the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, a member of the Association for Computing Machinery's US Technology Policy Committee as well as IEEE's Ethics Committee.
He is member of the Chilean Academy of Sciences (2002),[1] founding member of the Chilean Academy of Engineering (2010), and corresponding member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (2018).[2] He is an ACM Fellow (2009).[3] and an IEEE Fellow (2011).[4] He is a former member of Spain's Advisory Council on AI (2019-2023).
From June 2016 until June 2020 he was CTO of NTENT, a semantic search technology company.[5] Before, until February 2016, he was VP of Research for Yahoo! Labs, leading teams in United States, Europe, Asia and Latin America.[6]
He obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Waterloo with Efficient Text Searching, supervised by Gaston Gonnet and granted in 1989.
His research interests include:
Dr. Baeza-Yates was awarded one of the Spanish national Computer Science awards in 2018[12] as well as the J.W. Graham Medal in Computing and Innovation by the University of Waterloo, Canada, in 2007. In August 2008, Dr. Baeza-Yates was proposed for the first time to the Chilean National Prize in Applied Sciences (Premio Nacional de Ciencias Aplicadas). He has been proposed again most of even years when this award is given.