Yahoo! has announced the expansion of its India R&D operations with the launch of Yahoo! Labs – Bangalore, its first in India. Dr. Rajeev Rastogi has been appointed as vice president and head of the new lab.

Yahoo! Labs – Bangalore will be a centre of excellence for next generation search and advertising technologies, focused on making the Web more relevant and simple for users and advertisers.

“Yahoo! Labs – Bangalore intends to build its world-class team, which is focused on delivering the most valuable insights and leading edge technologies to delight all of our customers worldwide,” said Dr. Prabhakar Raghavan, SVP and Head of Yahoo! Research.

Prior to joining Yahoo!, Rastogi was the founding director of Bell Labs India. He was a Bell Labs Fellow and Distinguished Member of its Technical Staff. Currently, he sits on the editorial board of Communications for the Association for Computing Machinery (CACM).

“Yahoo! is focused on pioneering research and technology to delight hundreds of millions of users each day on the Web,” said Rastogi. "I’m delighted to be joining Yahoo! and plan to draw on my experiences in the areas of database systems, data mining and network management to help the team tackle some of the toughest problems on the Web.”

Rastogi will be instrumental in continuing the success of Yahoo! Big Thinkers India, a series of quarterly public lectures on science, technology and the Internet. The 2008 India series kicks off tomorrow with Dr. Preston McAfee, Research Fellow and VP, Microeconomics, Yahoo! This series brings together academia, scientists, industry and media, and will feature international subject matter experts from within Yahoo!.