Strategic Workshop on Information Retrieval

University Of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst MA

Investigators

Abstract

This award provides support for U.S. researchers to participate in the Strategic Workshop on Information Retrieval, to be held in Lorne, Victoria, Australia in February 2012. The goal of the workshop is to explore and define long-range research issues of general and personal information management in the context of information that is constantly changing, that is in a diverse set of formats, and that is stored in numerous locations. This workshop brings together about 40 junior and senior researchers from around the world with expertise spanning the information retrieval, information science, and search communities to develop common understandings and goals of the long-term challenges and opportunities. The workshop will explore at least the following questions: (1) How can Information Retrieval algorithms be adapted to this new paradigm where information is distributed, multimedia, and dynamic? (2) In this setting, what are the key challenges that researchers, graduate students, and funding agencies should be aware of? (3) How can the successful evaluation models for Information Retrieval be extended to this setting where data availability and privacy are major challenges? (4) How should teaching about Information Retrieval be modified to reflect likely changes in the field? This workshop is expected to yield research directions that will impact the information retrieval and science research and development communities as well as research groups that tackle problems arising within this context (e.g., machine learning, human computer interaction). The immediate beneficiaries of the workshop's publications will include graduate students, faculty members, industrial researchers, and developers of search-related technology. In addition, it is expected that general users of search tools will benefit from resulting advances in technology. Results addressing the questions above will be disseminated on a dedicated website (http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/swirl12/) and will also be published in the widely distributed SIGIR Forum newsletter and its web site.