Stanford Professor Awarded Grant For Darknet Analyzer Search Engine

Posted by: Benjamin Vitáris

October 2, 2015

Stanford assistant professor of computer science and University of Washington (UW) alumnus, Christopher Ré, is one of the 24 persons who won the ”genius” grant this year that has been awarded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The MacArthur Foundation don’t just gives out grants to everyone, Cristopher Ré has done something big to receive this price and nomination. Ré has developed a search engine that can analyze information of the dark web. This data is a huge help for federal agencies and other law enforcement authorities, since Deep Dive (the name of the search engine) can be used for helping LE to find, track and hunt down human trafficking networks on the darknet.

“He has taken the area of database research to a whole new level,” stated Dan Suciu, University of Washington professor of computer science and engineering and Ré’s former doctoral advisor. “I’m very happy for him.”

There has been a video interview conducted with Ré about his new research. He made this statement in it:

“We’re trying to summarize the vast information that’s out there — on all of the web pages, in all of the libraries, in all the government reports – in one place. At least, that’s the dream.”

Christopher Ré has received a grant of $625.000 for developing Deep Dive, this sum will be paid to him quarterly in the following 5 years. When he was asked by the media how is he going to spend his grant, he could not answer to the question.

Updated: 2015-10-02