Apple hires doctoral search guru for Siri

Apple really wants to beef up its voice recognition platform.

According to a report on Allthingsd.com, Dr. Bill Stasior will be heading to Apple’s corporate headquarters to help with the search algorithms that power the iPhone’s voice search platform Siri.

Stasior, who graduated with a PhD from MIT, was previously the head of Amazon’s A9.com search service, which is a powerful platform that incorporates data from Google, Amazon, and IMDB all into the same system.

A9 launched in 2004, but it was under Stasior’s direction that it gained incredible praise and attention. He took over as the company’s CEO in 2006 and has been there ever since. At least, until now.

Obviously someone with that kind of passion for and expertise in the world of online search would make a great addition to the Siri team.

Even though Siri has gained all sorts of acclaim, it’s mainly because it is the first of its kind, with a voice search platform designed to interpret regular human speech. It is by no means perfect, and there are many improvements still to be made.

This new hire, which has only been reported by sources and not confirmed by any sort of official Apple announcement, comes after Siri co-founder Adam Cheyer left the company this summer.