Lars Rasmussen

Lars Rasmussen is a Danish computer scientist, technology executive, and the co-founder of Google Maps. He was the director of engineering for Facebook in London. In early 2003, Lars and his brother Jens co-founded a mapping-related startup, Where 2 Technologies, which was acquired by Google in October 2004. Rasmussen became the head of the Google Maps team and worked at Google until joining Facebook in late 2010.

In 1990, Rasmussen graduated from the University of Aarhus with a degree in Computer Science and Mathematics. He gained his MSc in Computer Systems Engineering from the University of Edinburgh in 1992.

Rasmussen began his PhD, working with Mark Jerrum and Alistair Sinclair in the Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science at Edinburgh, then moved, with Sinclair, to Berkeley, California, USA.

He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1998, for his thesis “On Approximating the Permanent and Other #P-Complete Problems”.