cv/Tal Cohen

Software engineer and avid reader; team manager and book collector; overseeing over two hundred people at work and two kids at home. Currently a senior director of software engineering in Google, Inc.

All lists below are in reverse chronological order.

Professional Experience

(2007–date) Google, Inc.
I’m a senior director of software engineering in Google’s Consumer Shopping group, leading a team of over 200 engineers and research scientists in Google’s Haifa, Tel Aviv, Zürich, Pittsburgh, Mountain View, Seattle, and NYC offices. My team is focused on shopping-related search results, and we are also re-inventing shopping.google.com in the US, Europe, and elsewhere.
    Early in my Google career, I’ve worked in the AdWords and AdSense product groups. From 2009 to late 2021, I was part of the Search org, heading a team that played a leading role in reshaping Google's search results page and enriching Google’s Knowledge Engine. If you have used Google to find up-to-date information about sports, weather, stock quotes, currency and unit conversion rates, election results, and more, you've used search features developed by the team I managed.
(1999–2007) Freelance web developer
While in grad school, I developed several websites, including a CMS program that powered the original homepage of the Israeli Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy (sf-f.org.il) and the first version of movie reviews site FishEye (fisheye.co.il).
(1997–2003) IBM Haifa Research Laboratory (IBM HRL)
Worked as an intern and later in a part-time position in IBM’s Haifa Research Laboratory, first in the Programming Languages and Optimization department and later in the Systems and Software department. I took part in several research projects, including: 3D graph visualization, large-framework accessibility, static analysis of software and automated Enterprise Java validation tools (for IBM’s WebSphere Studio product).
(1995–1998) Shells Interactive, Ltd.
Worked as a lead programmer, engineering manager and later on as a consultant for this startup company, which created multimedia authoring tools and 3D technology for the web.
(1992–2000) GalSoft, Ltd.
Led several projects in this small software house, including the development of multimedia CD-ROMs for teaching driving theory, preparing students to psychometric exams, and more. Years later, I have also orchestrated the porting of some of these projects into modern web-sites, and developed additional (unrelated) web-sites for this company.
(1991–1993) FastVGA
A shareware multimedia toolkit for Borland Pascal programmers that I developed during my highschool years. FastVGA was an engine for arcade and action games under DOS, including a high-speed graphics engine with graphic primitives, precision timing functions, etc.

Over the years, I also did quite a few different freelance projects and provided consultancy services to numerous companies, including banks, insurance companies, and software engineering firms.

Personal Details

Formal Education

  1. B.A. in Literature (Cum Laude), Open University of Israel, 2023 (GPA: 95.4)
  2. Ph.D. in Computer Science, Technion, 2007 (GPA: 99.1)
  3. M.Sc. in Computer Science (Summa Cum Laude), Technion, 2002 (GPA: 98.4)
  4. B.A. in Computer Science (Cum Laude), Technion, 1999 (GPA: 90.9)

Publications

  1. Douglas R. Hofstadter, trans. Tal Cohen and Yarden Nir-Buchbinder, Gödel, Escher, Bach: Gavish Ben-Almavet, a Hebrew translation of Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, Dvir (an imprint of Kinneret-Zmora-Bitan press), 2011. (Errata for the first and second printings.)
  2. Tal Cohen, Joseph (Yossi) Gil, “Three Approaches to Object Evolution”, in Proceedings of The 7th International Conference on the Principles and Practice of Programming in Java (PPPJ 2009), Calgary, Alberta, Canada, August 2009.
  3. Tal Cohen, Joseph (Yossi) Gil and Itay Maman, “Guarded Program Transformations using JTL”, in Proceedings of the 46th International Conference on Objects, Models, Components and Patterns (TOOLS Europe 2008), Zurich, Switzerland, June 2008.
  4. Tal Cohen, “Applying Aspect-Oriented Software Development to Middleware Frameworks”, Ph.D. dissertation, The Technion — Israel Institute of Technology, February 2007.
  5. Tal Cohen and Joseph (Yossi) Gil, “Better Construction with Factories”, in Journal of Object Technology, vol. 6, no. 6, July/August 2007.
  6. Tal Cohen, Joseph (Yossi) Gil and Itay Maman, “JTL and the Annoying Subtleties of Precise μ-Pattern Definitions”, in 1st International Workshop on Design Patterns Detection for Reverse Engineering (DPD4RE/WCRE), Benevento, Italy, October 2006.
  7. Tal Cohen, Joseph (Yossi) Gil and Itay Maman, “JTL - the Java Tools Language”, in ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA 2006), Portland, Oregon, USA, October 2006.
  8. Tal Cohen and Joseph (Yossi) Gil, “Shakeins: Non-Intrusive Aspects for Middleware Frameworks”, in Transactions on Aspect-Oriented Software Development II, Springer LNCS volume 4242, November 2006.
  9. Tal Cohen and Joseph (Yossi) Gil, “AspectJ2EE = AOP + J2EE”, in the 18th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2004), Springer LNCS volume 3086, Oslo, Norway, June 2004.
  10. Tal Cohen, “The Delegation-Managed Persistence Entity Bean: A composite entity bean for a new generation”, in Java Developer’s Journal, Vol. 9, Issue 2, February 2004.
  11. Uri Dekel, Tal Cohen and Sara Porat, “Towards a Standard Family of Languages for Matching Patterns in Source Code”, in Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Software Science, Technology and Engineering (SwSTE ’03), Herzlia, Israel, November 2003.
  12. Tal Cohen, “Java Q&A: How Do I Correctly Implement the equals() Method?”, in Dr. Dobb’s Journal, May 2002.
    (Note: This technical article was the basis for several academic works by others, such as Stevenson and Phillips, Implementing object equivalence in Java using the template method design pattern, SIGCSE 2003.)
  13. Tal Cohen, “Self-Calibration of Metrics of Java Methods: Towards the Discovery of a Common Programming Practice”, M.Sc. Thesis, Technion — Israeli Institute of Technology, 2001.
  14. Tal Cohen and Joseph (Yossi) Gil, “Self-Calibration of Metrics of Java Methods”, in Proceedings of Technology of Object-Oriented Languages and Systems 37 (TOOLS Pacific 2000), Sydney, Australia, November 2000.
  15. Tal Cohen, Software Engineering Methods, a textbook (in Hebrew) used in IBM Learning Services (Israel) software engineering courses, 1998.
  16. Tal Cohen and Irit Cohen, Logic 1 for Computer Science, Technion course book (in Hebrew), based on lectures by Dr. Shai Ben-David, 1997.
  17. Tal Cohen, The Turbo Column, a monthly column about Turbo Pascal programming in the Israeli edition of PC World (an IDG publication), 1991–1993.

Honors and Awards

  1. Technion Teaching Excellence Award (Spring 2018)
  2. Technion Teaching Excellence Award (Winter 2012)
  3. Technion CS Faculty Excelling Teacher Award (Spring 2008)
  4. The Knesset (Israeli parliament) Award for Outstanding Student Achievements (June 2001)
  5. Aaron and Miriam Gutwirth Special Prize for M.Sc. Students (2001)
  6. Technion CS Faculty Assiduous Excelling TA Award (Spring 2000 semester)
  7. Technion CS Faculty Excelling TA Award (Winter 2000 semester)

Patents and Defensive Publications

The opposite of “Honors and Awards”, I guess.
  1. Bar-Yehuda, Cohen, Erez et al. (2019), Dynamically updating user interface elements, EP 3,827,332, filed December 16, 2019 and granted August 7, 2024
  2. Snir, Eiger, Akiva et al. (2019), Using video clips as dictionary usage examples, EP 4,049,270, filed November 4, 2019 and granted October 4, 2023
  3. Tal Cohen (2018), Spreadsheets with programmatically accessible version history, February 15, 2018 (defensive publication in Technical Disclosure Commons)
  4. Tal Cohen (2017), Contextual language translation, US 10,229,114, filed November 29, 2017 and granted March 12, 2019
  5. Tal Cohen (2016), Detecting Search Query Language, January 19, 2016 (defensive publication in Technical Disclosure Commons)
  6. Cohen, Bar-Yossef, Tsvetkov et al. (2015), Enriching search results, US 9,536,006, filed November 23, 2015 and granted January 3, 2017
  7. Tal Cohen (2014), Determining transportation status using network connections, US 9,836,725, filed October 2, 2014 and granted December 5, 2017; updated in US 10,127,526, November 13, 2018
  8. Ofek, Gomes, Cohen et al. (2014), Providing answer boxes based on query results, US 9,607,087, filed August 1, 2014 and granted March 28, 2017
  9. Cohen, Bar-Yossef, Tsveskov et al. (2011), Triggering answer boxes, filed May 27, 2011 and granted May 31, 2016; updated in US 9,805,110, October 31, 2017, and in US 10,146,849, December 4, 2018
  10. Ramanarayanan, Gong, Viswanthan et al. (2010), Triggering music answer boxes relevant to user search queries, US 8,788,514, filed October 28, 1010 and granted July 22, 2014; updated in US 9,195,741, November 24, 2015

Teaching Experience

(1998–date) Technion (Israeli Institution of Technology in Haifa, Israel)
I occasionally teach courses in the Faculty of Computer Science. To date, I have taught the following courses: Programming Languages (234319), Introduction to the Theory of Compilation (236360), Object-Oriented Programming (236703), Introduction to Operating Systems (234119), Operating Systems/Linux (234120), and Advanced Topics in CS: Enterprise programming (236606).
(2007–2016) Haifa University
I led several courses in the Department of Computer Science, including a seminar in Programming Languages, a course in Web development, and a project in modern application development technologies.
(1998–2003) IBM (Israel) Learning Services
I taught various professional training courses in IBM (Israel) Learning Services. My field of expertise was software engineering, advanced topics in Java, Enterprise Java, Web Services, and the IBM WebSphere Application Server. I have also developed custom course materials for several of IBM’s clients.
(1999) The Open University of Israel
I taught software engineering courses in the Israeli Open University’s “Project: Thought”, designed to introduce people with academic degrees to computer-related professions.

Contact Information

E-mail: tal.ayal.cohen@gmail.com
Homepage: http://tal.forum2.org/

©1997–2024 by Tal Cohen