10 Uhr, TEL 1315
Abstract:
Modern search engines have been moving away from very simplistic interfaces that aimed at satisfying a user’s need with a single-shot query. Interactive features such as query suggestions and faceted search are now integral parts of Web search engines. Generating good query modification suggestions or alternative queries to assist a searcher remains however a challenging issue. Query log analysis is one of the major strands of work in this direction. While much research has been performed on query logs collected on the Web as a whole, query log analysis to enhance search on smaller and more focused collections (such as intranets, digital libraries and local Web sites) has attracted less attention. The talk will look at a number of directions we have explored at the University of Essex in addressing this problem by automatically acquiring continuously updated domain models using query and click logs (as well as other sources).
Biography:
Udo Kruschwitz is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering at the University of Essex. His main research focus is the interface between natural language processing (NLP) and information retrieval (IR). He is the author of the monograph “Intelligent Document Retrieval” published in Springer’s Information Retrieval Series. He was lead investigator of the recently finished multi-site EPSRC research project “Automatic Adaptation of 
Knowledge Structures for Assisted Information Seeking” (AutoAdapt). He is secretary of the BCS Information Retrieval Specialist Group (IRSG) and was co-chair of ECIR 2010 and has been involved in organising industry-related search events such as Search Solutions 2010, 2011 and 2012 and ECIR Industry Day 2010 and 2011. He co-chaired SIGIR 2012 Industry Track and is Short Paper and Demo co-chair at SIGIR’13 and Demo co-chair at MMM’14.