Communications of the ACM
Computer Scientist Discusses Google Project
"I was very fortunate to be the first engineer on this project to research, and then help implement the new ideas of Google designers," says Google researcher Manas Tungare.
Credit: Virginia Tech
Manas Tungare, a 2009 doctoral graduate from Virginia Tech's Department of Computer Science in the College of Engineering, was the first engineer to work on Google Instant during its earliest developmental stage.
Google publicly launched this new application on Sept. 8.
"I was very fortunate to be the first engineer on this project to research, and then help implement the new ideas of Google designers," Tungare says. He recently gave a presentation to Virginia Tech faculty and students of the computer science department about Google Instant and how product development works.
Tungare worked on Google Instant for more than a year developing prototypes and performing experiments. The goal of his prototyping was to develop a user interface that allowed individuals to receive search results faster. According to the Official Google Blog, this new search service helps the user search-before-you-type. "Instant takes what you have typed already, predicts the most likely completion and streams results in real time for those predictions," states the Google Blog.
Tungare received a bachelor of science degree in computer engineering from Mumbai University in India in 2001. In 2003 he completed at master of science in computer science from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta where he specialized in human-computer interaction. As a Virginia Tech doctoral student he interned at Google during the summers of 2005, 2006, and 2007.
During Tungare's tenure at Virginia Tech he was advised by Manuel A. Perez-Quinones, associate professor of computer science and associate dean of the Graduate School. Perez also chaired Tungare's dissertation committee.
"I like to build and hack on things," Tungare says. "Dr. Perez has a knack for building things, too, and his encouragement made it much more fun while at [Virginia Tech]," he says.
"Manas is one of those individuals that understands and values the scientific research process while at the same time he enjoys building little software tools that are incredibly useful," Perez-Quinones says.
Many of Tungare's free software applications are found on his website.
Tungare, formerly of Mumbai, India, now resides in Mountain View, CA.
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