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Kayak appoints IT expert
Kayak.com has appointed Giorgos Zacharia as chief scientist.
Zacharia, who has a Ph.D. in computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will be responsible for predictive modelling and machine learning to improve speed, personalisation and efficiency across all Kayak.com brands.
He will be based at the travel search company’s engineering headquarters in Concord, Massachusetts,
Co-Founder and CTO Paul English said: "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 personalise the hotel display so the user can find what they’re looking for more easily, without being distracted by hotels out of their interest set.”
Zacharia previously served as co-founder, CTO and CSO of Open Ratings, Inc., a provider of supply risk management solutions.
He was also instrumental in co-founding two machine learning-driven hedge funds, Stocknomics Ltd. and Emporics Capital Management, LLC.
By Bev Fearis
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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