Norbert Fuhr “Modeling Interactive Information Retrieval as a Stochastic Process”

Stochastic models have a long history in IR. For modeling sequences of interactions, different variants of Markov models have been proposed by a number of researchers. Here a user moves stochastically between different model states, which are not directly observable; instead, some signal is emitted along with each transition. For applying these models to interactive retrieval, we aim at modeling search progress at a level that is comparable to cognitive models. This allows for user-oriented analysis of interactive IR, for user guidance and for stochastic simulations of interactive IR.

Bio:

Norbert Fuhr holds a PhD (Dr.) in Computer Science from the Technical University of Darmstadt, which he received in 1986. He became Associate Professor in the computer science department of the University of Dortmund in 1991 and was appointed Full Professor for computer science at the University of Duisburg-Essen in 2002.

His past research dealt with topics such as probabilistic retrieval models, the integration of IR and databases, retrieval in distributed digital libraries and XML documents, and user friendly retrieval interfaces. His current research interests are models for interactive retrieval, user-oriented retrieval methods and social media retrieval.

Norbert Fuhr has served as PC member and program chair of major conferences in IR and digital libraries, and on the editorial boards of several journals in these areas.

In 2012, Norbert Fuhr received the Gerald Salton Award of ACM-SIGIR.

Udo Kruschwitz “Enterprise Search: a World beyond Web Search”

Search has become ubiquitous but that does not mean that search has been solved. Enterprise search, which is broadly speaking the use of information retrieval technology to find information within organisations, is a good example to illustrate this. It is an area that is of huge importance for businesses, yet has attracted relatively little academic interest. The talk will explore the main issues involved in enterprise search both from a research as well as a practical point of view and use Web search as a common reference point as this is likely the search application area that people are most familiar with.

Bio:

Udo Kruschwitz is a Professor in the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering at the University of Essex. His main research interest is the interface between information retrieval (IR) and natural language processing (NLP). Professor Kruschwitz has successfully led EPSRC and ESRC research projects developing algorithms to turn unstructured and partially structured textual data into structured knowledge and user/cohort models that have been applied in a variety of applications including search, navigation and summarisation. He has furthermore been involved as PI and Co-I in successful joint university/industry projects that turned NLP and IR research into practical commercial applications, for example as PI on a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) project with Signal Media. The collaboration won the Best Knowledge Transfer Partnership Project of the Year Award at InnovateUK’s ‘Best of the Best 2015’ event, and another KTP project with Signal Media has just started.

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