EECS Alum Brent Hecht Receives Yahoo! Academic Career Enhancement (ACE) Award

Dr. Hecht is currently an Assistant Professor within the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Minnesota.

Brent HechtBrent Hecht (PhD, 2013, Advisor Prof. Darren Gergle) was selected to receive the 2013 Yahoo! Academic Career Enhancement (ACE) Award.

Dr. Hecht is currently an Assistant Professor within the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Minnesota.

Five young professors conducting academic research at leading research universities around the world were selected for the honor. Hecht will receive a $10,000 unrestricted gift.

Established in 2011, the ACE award is designed to help newly hired faculty launch research programs in areas of relevance to Yahoo Labs.

Dr. Hecht's interests lie at the intersection of human–computer interaction, geography, and big data, and his research centers on the relationship between big data and human factors such as culture. A major focus of his work involves volunteered geographic information and its application in location-aware technologies.

His background makes him uniquely qualified to tackle problems that involve both computer science and geography. Dr. Hecht's research will have lasting repercussions across a plurality of research at Yahoo Labs, from human-computer interaction to information retrieval to multimedia.

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