IIT - Inventing the Future

The 2009 IIT Commencement will be held on Saturday, May 16, 2009 on IIT’s Main Campus. This year's commencement speaker is Marissa Mayer. Marissa leads Google's efforts on search products — web search, images, news, books, products, maps, — and other consumer-facing initiatives such as Google Toolbar, Google Desktop, Google Health, Google Labs, and more. Her contributions have included designing and developing Google's search interface, internationalizing the site to over 100 languages, and launching more than 100 features and products on Google.com.

Several patents have been filed on her work in artificial intelligence and interface design. Google's first female engineer, Marissa joined in 1999 and led the user interface and web server teams at that time. 



Concurrently with her full-time work at Google, Marissa has taught introductory computer programming classes at Stanford University, where she earned both her B.S. in Symbolic Systems and her M.S. in Computer Science. Stanford has recognized her with the Centennial Teaching Award and the Forsythe Award for her outstanding contribution to undergraduate education.

She has been named as one of the "50 Most Powerful Women" by Fortune, and Newsweek has listed her among the "10 Tech Leaders of the Future."