Discovery Engine Corp., a startup search company founded by computer scientists from Stanford and Google, today formally announced that Dr. Alex Lopez-Ortiz, one of the world’s leading experts in search technology, has been hired as Chief Scientist. He joins Discovery Engine from the University of Waterloo, Ontario where he is a tenured professor in the Computer Science department. In his new role, Lopez-Ortiz will lead research and development at Discovery Engine.

“We’re very excited that Alex has joined our team,” said Bill Mydlowec, co-founder and CEO of Discovery Engine. “Alex has made significant contributions in theoretical computer science, with applications in information retrieval, database systems, and parallel processing. His appointment as Chief Scientist will help establish Discovery Engine as a recognized innovator in the industry.”

In his new role, Lopez-Ortiz will serve as head of research and development at Discovery Engine. In addition, he we will serve as the liaison to the academic community, and as head of Discovery Engine’s scientific advisory board.

“I am very excited to join the team at Discovery Engine,” said Lopez-Ortiz. “We believe that today’s search engines are inefficient, yet extremely profitable. This presents an opportunity for a startup search company to create a better engine, just as Google did almost ten years ago.”

Discovery Engine Corp. is a Silicon Valley startup company developing a next-generation internet search engine. Existing engines like Google are inadequate for many kinds of searches, including: questions that cannot easily be reduced to a few keywords, queries that are inherently ambiguous, and complex searches whose answers require compiling information from multiple sources. Discovery Engine aims to go beyond current search engines by allowing users to ask more difficult and subtle questions, and by producing results that are more accurate and meaningful.

*First noticed here.