Pandu Nayak

Pandu Nayak (he/him), is a Vice President on Search. Having worked at Google for over 19 years, he currently serves as a Chief Scientist in Google Search and is particularly interested in language understanding as it applies to Search. He previously led Google's algorithmic and ranking teams.

Pandu has been an Adjunct Professor in Stanford University’s Computer Science department, teaching Information Retrieval with Chris Manning. In the past, he’s also created and taught a class on Reasoning Methods in Artificial Intelligence.

Prior to joining Google, Pandu was the Chief Architect and then CTO of Stratify, Inc, where he helped develop the successful Stratify Legal Discovery service. Prior to joining Stratify, he was a Research Scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center and served as the Deputy Lead of the Remote Agent project, which was the first Artificial Intelligence system to be given primary command of a spacecraft.

Pandu received a B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT-Bombay, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University. His Ph.D. dissertation, Automated Modeling of Physical Systems, was an ACM Distinguished Dissertation.