John T Riedl
Also known as John Riedl, John Thomas Riedl
John Riedl was a University of Minnesota computer scientist whose GroupLens research on collaborative filtering helped found the field of recommender systems. After a Purdue PhD in computer science in 1990, he joined Minnesota's faculty and in 1992 began work with Paul Resnick on GroupLens, a system that predicted which Usenet articles readers would like from other readers' ratings. In 1996 he co-founded Net Perceptions to commercialize the work, and Amazon became its first customer. His lab went on to build MovieLens and study online communities, and GroupLens won the 2010 ACM Software System Award; he also became an ACM Fellow and an IEEE Fellow. He died in 2013, at 51, after three years with melanoma.
Timeline
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1962–1990
Notre Dame and Purdue degrees
Born in January 1962, he earns a BS in mathematics from the University of Notre Dame in 1983. At Purdue University, he completes an MS in computer science in 1985 and a PhD in computer science in 1990.
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1990–2003
Professor at Minnesota
He joins the computer science faculty of the University of Minnesota in March 1990 as an assistant professor, becoming an associate professor in 1996 and a full professor in 2003. There he leads the GroupLens Research group and helps found the fields of recommender systems and social computing. He advises 16 PhD students, including Ed Chi and Aaron Halfaker, who go on to faculty posts and to companies such as Google, PARC, Intel, eBay and the Wikimedia Foundation.
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1992–1994
GroupLens for Usenet news
In November 1992, he and Paul Resnick attend the CSCW conference in Toronto, begin a research program on collaborative filtering and co-found the GroupLens Research project. Their system collects ratings from Usenet readers and uses them to predict how much other readers will like an article before they read it. The team publishes the algorithm, the system design and an MIT–Minnesota feasibility study at CSCW in 1994.
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1996–2004
Co-founding Net Perceptions
He co-founds Net Perceptions in 1996 with Steven Snyder, Joseph Konstan, Brad Miller and David Gardiner to commercialize recommender systems research. Amazon is its first customer, and within five years the company licenses his invention to over 250 companies. At the height of the dot-com bubble, Net Perceptions is valued at $1.5 billion with over 300 employees, and it is liquidated in 2004.
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1997–2002
MovieLens and item-based filtering
His GroupLens group launches MovieLens, a non-commercial movie recommender system, in 1997, and its rating datasets become standard data for recommender research. In 2001, he coauthors "Item-based collaborative filtering recommendation algorithms" with Badrul Sarwar, George Karypis and Joseph Konstan. With Konstan and Eric Vrooman, he writes Word of Mouse: The Marketing Power of Collaborative Filtering, published in August 2002.
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2002–2008
CommunityLab and Cyclopath
In 2002, GroupLens expands into social computing and online communities as Loren Terveen joins. He, Konstan and Terveen invite Robert Kraut, Sara Kiesler, Paul Resnick and Yan Chen to collaborate, and the larger team takes the name CommunityLab. In 2008, GroupLens launches Cyclopath, a geo-wiki for bicyclists used in the Twin Cities to help plan the regional cycling system.
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2009–2012
An ACM Software System Award
He is named an ACM Fellow in 2009. In 2010, GroupLens wins the ACM Software System Award, which honors his work on recommender systems. He becomes an IEEE Fellow and the McKnight Distinguished Professor at Minnesota in 2012.
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2013
Death from melanoma at 51
He dies in July 2013, aged 51, after three years with melanoma. A scholarship fund in his memory is set up at the University of Minnesota's Department of Computer Science.
Career
- 1996–2004Net PerceptionsCo-founder
- 1990–2013University of MinnesotaAssistant Professor, Associate Professor
Education
- 1990Purdue UniversityMS and PhD in computer science
- 1983University of Notre DameBS in mathematics
Colleagues
Sources and credits
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