2009 James R. Mellor Lecture

This lecture is the College of Engineering’s annual James R. Mellor Lecture. It is also a CSE Distinguished Lecture and part of CSE’s Women in CSE Lecture Series.

Marissa leads Google’s product management efforts on search products – web search, images, news, books, products, maps, Google Earth, the Google Toolbar, Google Desktop, Google Health, Google Labs, and more. She joined Google in 1999 as Google’s first female engineer and led the user interface and web server teams at that time. Her efforts have included designing and developing Google’s search interface, internationalizing the site to more than 100 languages, defining Google News, Gmail, and Orkut, and launching more than 100 features and products on Google.com. Several patents have been filed on her work in artificial intelligence and interface design. In her spare time, Marissa also organizes Google Movies – outings a few times a year to see the latest blockbusters – for 6,000+ people (employees plus family and friends).

Concurrently with her full-time work at Google, Marissa has taught introductory computer programming classes at Stanford to more than 3,000 students. Stanford has recognized her with the Centennial Teaching Award and the Forsythe Award for her outstanding contribution to undergraduate education.

Marissa has been featured in various publications, including Newsweek (“Tech Leaders of the Future” ), Red Herring (“Women to Watch” ), Business 2.0 (“Silicon Valley Dream Team” ), BusinessWeek, and Fast Company. In 2008, at 33, Marissa became the youngest woman ever to be included on Fortune’s Most Powerful Women list (#50).

Graduating with honors, Marissa received her B.S. in Symbolic Systems and her M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University. For both degrees, she specialized in artificial intelligence. She also holds an Honorary Doctorate of Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology.