Kayak.com Names Predictive Modeling Expert Giorgos Zacharia as Chief Scientist

MIT Fulbright Scholar to Further Improve Kayak.com Personalization and Speed

NORWALK, Conn., Feb. 17 /PRNewswire/ — Kayak.com, the world’s largest travel search site, today announces the appointment of Giorgos Zacharia as Chief Scientist. Zacharia, who has a Ph.D. in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will apply his expertise in predictive modeling and machine learning to improve speed, personalization and general efficiency across all Kayak.com brands. Zacharia will be based in the company’s engineering headquarters in Concord, Mass.

“Bringing Giorgos on board as Chief Scientist is a huge milestone for Kayak.com,” said Paul English, Co-Founder and CTO. “Giorgos’ background and leadership are a perfect match for Kayak.com’s focus on personalization and speed. While other travel sites bias their hotel display order by profitability, Kayak.com lists hotels by popularity and relevance to each individual user. Giorgos is building algorithms to further personalize the hotel display so the user more easily finds what they’re looking for without being distracted by hotels out of their interest set.”

“My work at MIT was focused on optimizing performance and relevancy of information from very large datasets,” said Zacharia. “While I’ve worked with several companies over the years, Kayak.com has the quickest team I’ve seen in terms of understanding and deploying innovative technologies. The travel field is ripe for improvements to user experience and choice. I am excited to work with Paul and his team to make dramatic speed and personalization enhancements across the Kayak.com platform.”

Zacharia previously served as co-founder, CTO and CSO of Open Ratings, Inc., a leading provider of supply risk management solutions. Zacharia was also instrumental in co-founding two machine learning-driven hedge funds, Stocknomics Ltd. and Emporics Capital Management, LLC. He is a Fulbright Scholar, holds four math and computer science degrees from MIT and has won five medals in International Mathematical and Physics Olympiads.

Zacharia’s Headshot: http://www.kayak.com/helpdata/photos/2008/giorgos.jpg

About Kayak.com

Kayak.com, the largest Travel 2.0 site in the world, is a global Internet media company operating Kayak.com, SideStep.com, TravelPost.com and TravelSearch.com. Kayak.com and SideStep.com display results from more than 440 travel brands, providing prices and itineraries for hundreds of airlines, more than 200,000 hotels, all leading rental car companies and 18 cruise lines. Kayak.com has won more awards since launch than any other travel site including the 2008 Webby Awards People’s Voice Winner; “Top 25 Budget-Centric Travel Websites”, by USA Today; “25 Sites We Can’t Live Without” by TIME Magazine; “Best Search Engine” by the Associated Press; and “Best of the Web” by BusinessWeek, Forbes and US News & World Report. Launched in 2005 by co-founders of Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia, Kayak.com’s investors include General Catalyst Partners, Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Trident Capital, Oak Investment Partners, Lehman Brothers Venture Partners and America Online, Inc. Kayak.com has sites in the US, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, India, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. For more information, visit www.Kayak.com.

SOURCE Kayak.com