Prof. Matias is a faculty member of the School of Computer Science at Tel Aviv University (on leave), having joined the faculty in 1997 as a recipient of the prestigious Alon Fellowship. He was recently a visitor at Stanford Univ (2004-2006). Prior to his position at Tel Aviv University, he was a Research Scientist at Bell Laboratories (1992-1997). He received his Ph.D. with distinction from Tel Aviv University (1992), M.Sc. from the Weizmann Institute (1987) (thesis with excellence), and B.Sc. (cum laude) from Tel Aviv University (1985). Previously he served in the Israeli IDF as an Israeli Air Force pilot.
Matias authored over 100 scientific and technological research papers and is the inventor of over 20 patents. His research and expertise span many diverse areas, and range from highly theoretical works to works involving applied technology and extensive system implementation. His research and technology developments and innovations include: data analysis, algorithms for massive data sets, data streams, data synopses, parallel computation, data compression, data and information management systems, data security and privacy, video scrambling, and Internet technologies. He is a frequent speaker and was on the program committees of numerous international scientific and technology conferences. He is on the founding steering committee of the Israeli Academic Grid and was a member of a national committee evaluating strategies for Grid technologies.
In addition to his academic and scientific work, for over a decade Matias has been heavily involved in the high tech industry and in technology and product development. He founded in Bell Labs the Lucent Personalized Web Assistant project (1996), developing one of the early Internet privacy and anti-spam technologies (sold by Lucent to a CMGI company); he co-founded and led Zapper Technologies (1999), developing advanced contextual and personalized search technologies; he was the CTO and Chief Scientist of Hyperroll, leading the technology strategy of its high performance data aggregation software that is at the core of data warehouses and Business Intelligence applications of multiple Fortune 100 enterprises. Matias has served as a consultant and adviser to many technology companies, including public and startup companies, and to venture capital firms.
Yossi Matias is a recipient of the 2005 ACM-EATCS Gödel prize in Theoretical Computer Science "for the profound impact on the theory and practice of the analysis of data streams". His work was instrumental in setting up a scientific field of algorithmics for massive data sets, and technologies now extensively used in industries involving massive data sets.