Michael Burrows is widely known as the creator of the Burrows–Wheeler transform. He also was, with Louis Monier

Louis Monier

Louis Monier was a founder of the Internet search engine AltaVista. After he left AltaVista, he worked at eBay and then at Google. He left Google in August 2007 to join Cuil, a search engine startup. He was Vice President of Products at Cuil. One month after the launch, he left Cuil, citing...

, one of the two main creators of AltaVista

AltaVista

AltaVista is a web search engine owned by Yahoo!. AltaVista was once one of the most popular search engines but its popularity declined with the rise of Google...

. He did his first degree in Electronic Engineering with Computer Science at University College London

University College London

University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...

. He then went on to do his PhD in the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory

University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory

The Computer Laboratory is the computer science department of the University of Cambridge. As of 2007, it employs 35 academic staff, 25 support staff, 35 affiliated research staff, and about 155 research students...

 at the University of Cambridge

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

, where he was a member of Churchill College. Burrows has worked for Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

, and now works for Google

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

. Burrows was born in Britain, and now lives in the United States, though he has chosen not to become an American citizen.