“Dr. Patel received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science from Rice University in 2000 and 2002, respectively. He entered Emory's doctoral program in Biostatistics in 2002 and received his doctoral degree from Emory in 2006, working under his advisor Dr. DuBois Bowman. He developed novel statistical methods to analyze functional connectivity of the brain using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data. Dr. Patel was selected by the Department of Biostatistics to be Emory’s first recipient of a Merck Company Scholarship in 2003 after his first year as a doctoral student.
Over the course of more than 14 years at Google, Dr. Patel has used his combination of statistical and computer science training to transform many of the products used across the world today. With Google Search, Dr. Patel developed the suite of experimentation tools we use thousands of times each year to make improvements to the core algorithms that power Search. From there, he led teams responsible for the freshness and topicality of search results. When you type a query to Google like, [who won the last Kutner award for distinguished service], the work he did to improve the freshness and topicality of Search is why we’re able to find the result showing the recent winner! This work affects over a billion users every day, and several billion searches a day.
Dr. Patel has always been unique in being able to combine his deep statistical understanding with his background in computer science to solve hard technical challenges, like understanding natural language in Search, or understanding images with Google Lens to build beautiful and simple products that have impacted billions of users across the world. Beyond Search, he also applied these ideas to kick off products like Gboard, the Android keyboard which autocorrects billions of words a day for hundreds of millions of users, and Google Podcasts, the best way to find and listen to audio on your phone. Impact like what he’s delivered doesn’t happen from just one person. Over the last 10 years, Dr. Patel has grown to become an excellent leader of junior engineers, analysts, and product managers, growing and leading teams of more than 300 people to help build Search, Google Lens, ARCore, Gboard, Google Podcasts, and now recently consumer shopping experiences across Google. For his contributions, over the last 14 years, Dr. Patel has been promoted through the ranks at Google, from a Level 4 Research Scientist to now being the Vice President of Engineering in the Consumer Shopping group at Google.
Prior to joining Google in 2007, Dr. Patel worked at Amgen, Inc. as a Senior Biostatistician and then a Biostatistics Manager for 2006 and 2007. At Amgen, Dr. Patel conducted statistical analyses for early phase clinical trials and pre-clinical trials and wrote statistical analysis plans, contributed heavily to clinical trial protocols, and worked with physicians, data managers, and clinical trial specialists to run early phase clinical trials.”