2008: SELF-ASSESSMENT
Employee: Debora Donato
Manager: Ricardo Baeza-Yates
Review Period: 1 Sept, 2007 – 31 Aug, 2008
1. 2008 BUSINESS PERFORMANCE GOALS AND RESULTS ACHIEVED:
Describe your goals and results achieved
and their impact on the department, customers and/or Yahoo! overall.
My goals for my second year in Yahoo! Research Barcelona have been the following:
- to further broaden the knowledge of the working environment and the research facilities.
- to applying the skills and the knowledge acquired in the area of Data Mining and Link Analysis to the study and the
characterization of implicit and explicit user behaviour as well as in other field related to Web Retrieval
- to confirm the rate of research papers published in well-known conferences with collaborators within Yahoo! as well as external
collaborators obtained during the first year of my activity.
- to increase my visibility in the scientific and academic community via activities such as membership in Organizing and Program
Committees of well-known conferences
- to increase the number of file patent applications with respect the first year
- to be involved in internal projects to fill up the gap I highlighted at the end of first year of my activity at Yahoo! Research
EXTERNAL IMPACT
I have 4 papers published in journals, 5 papers accepted to top conferences (1 of them accepted as poster but published in the
proceedings), 4 papers accepted to workshops held in conjunction with major conference and
1 paper submitted. I was also invited to contribute with a chapter on “Next Generation Search Algorithm” for the book “Next
Generation Networks” edited by Springers. Moreover I was invited to contribute to the Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems
(EOLSS) (www.eolss.net ) coordinated by the UNESCO-EOLSS Joint Committee with a chapter on “Communication Networks: WWW
and social networks”„
Journals
D. Donato, S. Leonardi, S. Millozzi, P. Tsaparas. Mining The Inner Structure of the Web Graph. J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 41 224017,
12 pp., 2008.
L. Becchetti, C. Castillo, D. Donato, S. Leonardi, R .Baeza-Yates. Link Analysis for Web Spam Detection. ACM Trans. Web 2 (1),
pp.1-42, 2008.
J. Xavier-Parreira, C. Castillo, D. Donato, S. Michel, G. Weikum. The JXP Method for Robust PageRank Approximation in Peer-toPeer Web Search Network. VLDB Journal 17 (2), pp. 291-313, 2008.
D. Donato, S. Leonardi, P. Tsaparas. Stability and Similarity of Link Analysis Ranking Algorithms. Special Issue of Internet
Mathematics devoted to the ANAW workshop 3 (4), pp. 479-507, 2008.
Top Conferences
I. Bordino, D. Donato, A. Gionis, S. Leonardi. Mining large networks with subgraph counting. Procs. of the 8th IEEE ICDM, Pisa, Italy,
6 pp., 2008 (To appear).
P. Boldi, F. Bonchi, C. Castillo, D. Donato, A. Gionis, S. Vigna. The query-flow graph: model and applications. Procs of CIKM, Napa
Valley, California, 10 pp., 2008 (To appear).
A. Ukkonen, C. Castillo, D. Donato, A. Gionis. Searching the Wikipedia with contextual information. (Poster) Procs of CIKM, Napa
Valley, California, 2008 (To appear).
F. Bonchi, C. Castillo, D. Donato, A. Gionis. Topical query decomposition. Procs. of 14th ACM KDD’08, Las Vegas, Nevada, pp. 52-
60, 2008
E. Agichtein, C. Castillo, D. Donato, A. Gionis, G. Mishne. Finding high quality content in social media with an application to
community-based question answering. Procs. of WSDM, Stanford, California, pp. 183-194, 2008
I. Bordino, P. Boldi, D. Donato, M. Santini, S. Vigna. Temporal evolution of the uk web. Procs of the Workshop on Analysis of
Dynamic Networks (ICDM-ADN’08), Pisa, Italy, 10 pp, 2008 (To appear)
Other Conferences and Workshops
D. Donato, S. Leonardi, M. Paniccia. Combining Transitive Trust and Negative Opinions for better Reputation Management in Social
Networks. Procs. of SNAKDD, Las Vegas, Nevada, 10 pp., 2008
C. Castillo, C. Corsi, D. Donato, P. Ferragina, A. Gionis. Query-log mining for detecting polysemy and spam. Procs. of WebKDD, Las
Vegas, Nevada, 2008
C. Castillo, C. Corsi, D. Donato, P. Ferragina, A. Gionis. Query-log mining for detecting spam. Short paper, Procs of AIRWeb,
Beijing, China, 4 pp., 2008
Submitted for publication
N. Perra, V. Zlatic, A. Chessa, C. Conti, D. Donato, G. Caldarelli PageRank Schroedinger-like equation: ranking top web pages
through a local potential
Invited talks
[07/11/2008] Workshop on Social Network, Emerging Community and Technologies in the WWW, Pula, Cagliari – Italy
TBA
[27/06/2008] SIKS/Yahoo Seminar on Searching and Ranking in Structured Text Repositories, University of Twente, Enschede - The
Netherlands
Efficient graph-based context-sensitive search
[09/04/2008] FET Proactive Workshop on Web Science - Brussels, Belgium
Toward Web Science
[13/03/2008] Seminar 08111 - Ranked XML Querying - Dagstuhl, Germany
Searching the Wikipedia with contextual information
[27/02/2008] Delis Final Workshop and Review Meeting - Barcelona, Spain
Web Spam Detection: link-analysis based and content based techniques
[04/10/2007] ECCS'07 Satellite Workshop: Enhancing Social Interaction: Recommendation Systems - Dresden, Germany
Efficient and Decentralized Page Rank Approximation in P2P Networks with Malicious Agents
Professional activities
Organization of Events:
Co-chair of the 6th WAW2009, Treasurer for WSDM2009, Organizing Committee of MI09
Journal reviewer for
TWEB, TKDE, TCS, KAIS, JWS, IP&M
Program Committee member of
HT 09, ESA 09, ICDE-3MESN 09, SIGIR 08, WWW 08, HYPERMEDIA 08, INFOSCALE 08, ECML PKDD 08.
Interns
I have (co)supervised Ilaria Bordino. with whom we have one paper accepted at ICDM’08 and one to ICDM-AND’08. I will supervise
Yana Volkovich who applied for an internship for the month of November.
INTERNAL IMPACT
Internal Project
Productionizing Session Breaking Project (Goal: transferring to the productionteam features and algorithms for extracting
interleaving chains; Catcher; Gene Meyer and Tom Thrall)
Research Assist Project (Goal: studying a set of features and simple model for the Research Assist project; Catcher: Tom Chi)
Context-Demo Project (Goal: creation of a public demo for Sandbox)
Image Search Collaboration Project (Goal: using session breaking method to segment image search logs; Catcher: Sriram
Sathish)
Diversity Metrics Project (Goal: finding metrics to measure the diversity of a query result set; Catcher: Ali Dasdan
IDFs
F. Bonchi, D. Donato, A. Gionis. Query flow graph model for session breaking. Approved
D. Donato, A. Gionis., C. Corsi, P. Ferragina. Query-log mining for detecting spam hosts. Filed
D. Donato, A. Gionis., C. Corsi, P. Ferragina.Query-log mining for detecting spam-attracting queries. Filed
F. Bonchi, D. Donato, A. Gionis. Diverse query recommendation via weighted set cover. Approved
F. Bonchi, D. Donato, A. Gionis. Diverse query recommendation via constrained clustering. Approved
D. Donato, A. Gionis. Context-sensitive search - Approved
B. Dumoulin, A. Gionis, D. Donato, Y. Agichtein. Systems and methods for finding high quality content in social media. Filed
D. Donato, V. Murdock. Annotations of Third Party Content with Yahoo Content. Filed
2. YAHOO! SUCCESS FACTORS: Provide a rating for yourself of Strong, Neutral or Not Strong for each of the following Success
Factors and provide any supporting comments in the comment box for each.
Communication and Influence: Possesses the ability to be understood
and have a thorough understanding of what others mean using verbal and
non-verbal skills to elicit understanding and/or agreement. Respects and
appreciates the needs of others and is able to win support from within and
outside Yahoo! to achieve the company’s objectives.
Problem Solving: Logical and creative when solving problems.
Results – Getting Stuff Done: Execution orientated, strong at
operationalising goals and strategies, with a greater focus on effectiveness
vs. efficiency, and gets stuff done in a way which is consistent with our
values. Helps others understand the purpose of the goals and the call to
arms.
Decision Making: Makes effective and timely decisions.
Strong
(I have developed the capacity of create and maintain working
relations among colleagues. In the recent stay in Santa Clara, I
operate in order to favour the cooperation between my group in
Barcelona and the various groups which we started internal projects.
Often people ask my opinion on problems)
Strong
(Solving problems is the core of the activity of a researcher. I think to
be a creative person and I am able to use this characteristic for the
success of my work)
Strong
(I have coordinated some internal projects. The coordination activity
requires technical skills in order to evaluate the working load,
capacity of mediating diverse requirements, catalysing the attention
of over-busy participants. I attended training course in order to
increase my knowledge of the means that the company offers to
improve effectiveness and efficiency)
Neutral
(I am not directly involved in Decision Making. The problems on which
Planning and Organising: Is organised, effectively sets and meets
goals, and anticipates change.
Living the Values (Excellence, Innovation, Customer Fixation,
Teamwork, Community, Fun): Actively demonstrates the values of
Yahoo!, can role model the values, and actively communicates and
promotes the values to others.
concentrate are usually discussed in brainstorming sessions with my
colleagues)
Strong
(I am organizing various events and I have realized that my colleagues
rely on me for everything that needs organizational skills)
Strong
(I am really convinced that Yahoo! Research collects an amazing
number of brilliant scientists. I enjoyed my work inside the company.
This extraordinary environment is a constant source of inspiration)
_____________________ (add as appropriate):
_____________________ (add as appropriate):
_____________________ (add as appropriate):
3. LEADERSHIP SUCCESS FACTORS
(For People Managers Only): How do you demonstrate our leadership Success Factors?
Provide a rating for yourself of Strong, Neutral or Not Strong for each of the following Success Factors and provide any supporting comments
in the comment box for each.
Thought Leadership: Creates and communicates a long-term vision,
balances short and long-term goals, keeps own and team's work aligned
with overall goals, understands the market and can predict change,
understands the industry and the competition, creates and adjusts
strategic plans.
People Leadership: Provides feedback and coaching, rewards hard work
and risk taking, takes mentoring role, challenges and develops employees,
accepts mistakes, provides visibility/opportunity.
Personal Leadership: Leads through change and adversity, makes
difficult decisions when necessary, builds consensus when appropriate,
motivates and encourages others.
Results Leadership: Sets challenging and productive goals for team,
keeps team accountable for actions, provides leadership and motivation,
provides resources and support, uses checkpoints and data to track
progress, sets up systems and processes to measure results.
4. STRENGTHS:
List 2-3 areas of strengths to focus on and grow.
Till this moment I have been working with a “bottom-up” approach. I figure out, during brainstorming sessions with my group, a
number of problems that could be of “interest” for the company and we have concentrated on them. Only in the second phase of
the work we take care of the transfer modalities to other groups in Yahoo!. Currently I am trying to following a different approach
for a restrict number of projects. I would like to have a more wide vision on which are the hot topics and the more urgent projects
for the company in order to tailored my research activity on them. In this way, I think that it would possible to bring my
contribution not only showing possible application of my work but also helping in individuate problems and hot topics for the ongoing projects.