Exploring Information Retrieval Speakers

Andrew MacFarlane is a Reader in Information Retrieval at City, University of London. He is a member of the Centre for HCI Design at at that institution. His research interests in information retrieval or search technologies are wide ranging from the technical side of computing (search algorithms) to information science (meta-data for search) and HCI (accessible information retrieval systems). He has developed a particular interest over the years in professional search in various environments such as journalism and advertising and has been an investigator on a number of different projects investigating key issues in this field

Talk title: IR Models: from theory to practice

Martin White is Managing Director of Intranet Focus Ltd. which he founded in 1999. He has carried out over 100 intranet projects in the UK, Europe, North America and the Middle East, run workshops on intranet management and enterprise search management and keynoted at many conferences around the world. He is Vice-Chairman of the BCS Information Retrieval Specialist Group (BSC IRSG). He is the author of eight books, including "Making Search Work" (Facet Publishing 2008) and "Enterprise Search" (O'Reilly Media 2015). His primary area of research is understanding the factors that affect the way that information flows around organizations. Personal webpage.

Talk title: The role of AI in search application

Tony Russel-Rose is Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at Goldsmith, University of London, and Director of UXLabs, a research and design consultancy specialising in complex search and information access applications, and founder of 2Dsearch, a start-up applying AI, natural language processing and data visualisation to create the next generation of professional search tools. He has served as vice-chair of the BCS Information Retrieval group and chair of the CIEHF Human-Computer Interaction group. He also holds the position of Honorary Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Interactive Systems Research, City University, London.

Talk title: User-centred design of search applications

Ingo Frommholz is a Reader in Data Science in the School of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Wolverhampton. He mainly works in the areas of Information Retrieval and Digital Libraries. Prior to this he was the University of Bedfordshire's Principal Investigator of the EU H2020 Innovative Training Network QUARTZ (Quantum Information Access and Retrieval Theory), which is concerned with formal approaches to Information Access and Retrieval based on the quantum mechanical framework. His main research interests are Information Retrieval, Information Systems and Digital Libraries. Personal webpage.

Talk title: Evaluating search performance

Karen Blakeman provides training on how to use the web and social media as research tools, how to identify and assess the quality of resources, and am a regular speaker at seminars and conferences. Personal webpage.

Talk title: Using Google's family of databases

Judi Vernau has been a practising information architect for over thirty years, and was the co-founder of Metataxis Ltd in 2002, a UK company specialising in information management and information architecture. Her particular interest has always been in structuring and categorising content, and I’ve built metadata schemes, thesauri, taxonomies and ontologies for government, third sector and commercial organisations around the world. She is now based in New Zealand, where she has recently been working on options for an all-of-government ontology for Archives New Zealand, as well as researching the development and use of indigenous metadata. She rans regular courses in information architecture at Victoria University Wellington.

Talk title: Paths to discovery: metadata and findability

Marjorie Hlava is President and Chairman of Access Innovations, Inc., an international database construction and information management services company she founded in 1978. She was educated as a botanist, trained by NASA as an information engineer, and has worked behind the scenes for most of the major information organizations. Her research interests center on speeding the human processes in knowledge management through productivity enhancements, working methodologies and software for the automation assistance of the human brain in organizing information. She has been active in pushing semantic enrichment and adaptation of artificial intelligence techniques wherever they allow consistently reproducible results. Marjorie is the creator of the patented Data Harmony software suite for the automation of indexing process that includes metadata management module to manage thesauri, taxonomies and ontologies. Marjorie authored numerous books and over 200 articles on the topic of information organization, semantic enrichment, taxonomy and thesaurus construction. A relevant publication, "The Taxobook", is a three-volume collection on information concepts, search and retrieval and the construction and implementation of taxonomies.

Talk title: Is search better with metadata? A real life experience

Ian Ruthven is a Professor of Information Seeking and Retrieval in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Strathclyde. He works in the area of information seeking and retrieval; understanding how (and why) people search for information and how electronic systems might help them search more successfully. This brings in a wide range of research including theoretical research on the design and modelling of information access systems, empirical research on interfaces and user interaction and research on the methodology of evaluating information access systems. Recent research has included interface design research to help children search for information, information seeking studies on information poverty within marginalised groups and studies on how people use online information to create a sense of happiness.

Talk title: Information seeking behaviour