David Yang
| Davíd Yang | |
|---|---|
 Founder and Chairman of the Board of ABBYY, Ph.D. in Physics and Mathematics, Laureate of Russian Government Award in Science and Technology | |
| Born |
June 3rd, 1968 Yerevan, Armenian SSR, Soviet Union |
| Citizenship | Soviet Union, Russian Federation |
| Occupation | Chairman, ABBYY |
| Website | |
Davíd Yang (David Yan) (Armenian: Դավիդ Յան, Russian: Дави́д Ян), born 1968, is an Armenian-born Russian, founder and chairman of the board of ABBYY, Ph.D. in Mathematics, and Laureate of Russian Government Award in Science and Technology.
Early life
David Yang was born in 1968 in Yerevan, Armenia, to a Chinese father and Armenian mother, both physicists. He spent his first 17 years in Armenia before enrolling in the prestigious Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. He graduated the Department of General and Applied Physics in 1992, with a M.S. degree in Applied Mathematics and Physics. He shares similar background with a fellow Armenian, ABBYY vice-president, Director of Data Capture Products Department Aram Pakhchanian, who has known David since Yerevan high school and later graduated from the same Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology [1]
Projects
In 1989, being a four-year student of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), David Yang founded his first company Bit Software together with Alexander Moskalev, a member of the Institute of Microelectronics Technology of Russian Academy of Science. In 1998 the company was renamed to ABBYY.
ABBYY employs leading engineers, scientists, and linguists developing Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR), Linguistic and Artificial Intelligence technologies.
Today, ABBYY is an international company with over 1250 regular and 900 freelance employees worldwide (as of January 2013). ABBYY Group headquarters are located in Moscow with sales and marketing offices in Ukraine, United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Taiwan, Cyprus and Russia. ABBYY products are being sold in more than 130 countries around the world through an extensive network of regional and international partners.
Among the most famous company products are ABBYY FineReader, an optical character recognition system, and ABBYY Lingvo, an electronic dictionary. The overall number of users of ABBYY products, which range from end user applications for PC and mobile devices to enterprise solutions and development tools, exceeds 30 million people according to internal research.
Alongside with leading ABBYY David is a co-founder, entrepreneur and/or co-investor of a number of other projects.
Among these are:
- Development of Cybiko – the first pocket communication computer for youngsters (sold in Russia, United States and Taiwan between 1998–2003);
- Participation in ATAPY Software company (http://www.atapy.com, 2001);
- Foundation and participation in iiko company, which develops a new-generation system of restaurants and hospitality services management (http://www.iiko.ru, 2005);
- Participation in a number of creative projects, such as FAQ-Café studio (http://www.faqcafe.ru, 2004), restaurant, club, and gallery ArteFAQ (http://www.artefaq.ru, 2007); art-club “Squat” (http://www.SquatCafe.ru, 2009); club “The Sisters Grimm” (http://www.sgrimm.ru, 2009).
- Participation in charity and educational projects, such as educational fund Ayb (http://www.ayb.am, 2005), Supervisory Council of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, educational centre Tumo (2006), etc.
Publicity
David Yang is the author of a large number of scientific publications and is the holder of many patents. He is ranked among the most famous Russian IT-entrepreneurs. David is interested in modern art, architecture, socio-communicative technologies. He is married and has two children.
Timeline
1989, June – David Yang gets acquainted with Alexander Moskalev and suggests developing electronic dictionary Lingvo for PCs.
1993 – David Yang graduates from General and Applied Physics Department of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. The theme of his graduation project is “DSL dictionaries description language”.
2000 – A quarter million of Cybiko computers are sold in the USA (4 months after the Cybiko launch).
2001 – David Yang’s profile is included in the "Who Is Who" US directory.
2002 – David is named a “Technology Pioneer” at the World Economic Forum in Davos
2002 – David becomes the laureate of Russian Government Award in Science and Technology
2003 – David Yang defends the dissertation on computer recognition of handwriting and gets Ph.D. in Physics and Mathematics.
2004 – FAQ-Cafe Creative Studio is opened.
2005 – Foundation of iiko company.
2006 – ABBYY products receive 150 awards for unrivaled quality from leading international magazines and test laboratories.
2007 – David Yang participates in the edition of a two-volume illustrated hardcover “ABBYY Lingvo Comprehensive English-Russian Dictionary”.
2008 – Iiko company signs the contract in accordance with which all the restaurants “Sbarro” in Russia (over 200 units) are to be automated with iikoRMS and iikoChain technologies.
2010-2014 – A regular member of the jury at Russia’s innovation and startup project competitions such as “Technovation Cup”,[2] “Startup of the Year”, and Forbs Startup Competition.
2011 – David Yang becomes a member of the Public Council of Federal Tax Service (Russia) and a member of the Skolkovo Foundation Expert Committee.
2011 – A winner of the prestigious "Aristos 2011" award in Russia, the “Innovative Company Leader” category.[3]
2013 – David published his book “Now I Eat All I Want!” (available for free in English and Russian)[4]
References
- Bio on ABBYY website
- Bio on Armeniapedia, the online Armenia Encyclopedia
- “The Master of the Game” on Time Europe website
- Marquis Who's Who on the Web