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InfoSeekers Are Key to Success of the Third Annual CHIIR Conference

InfoSeekers Are Key to Success of the Third Annual CHIIR Conference

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Three cheers to InfoSeeking Lab Director Chirag Shah and several other InfoSeekers who helped organize and host a successful CHIIR conference.

 

On March 11, some 130 researchers from 25 countries in North America, Europe and Australia descended on New Brunswick for five days of workshops, presentations, tutorials, networking and fun.

CHIIR stands for the Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval, which is sponsored by the Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval (SIGIR), in cooperation with (SIGCHI). The international conference represents a merger of two successful past events: the Information Interaction in Context (IIiX) conference and the Human Computer Information Retrieval (HCIR) symposium, which have run since 2006 and 2007, respectively.

The events took place at the SC&I building on the College Avenue campus of Rutgers and at The Heldrich Hotel in New Brunswick. This year’s keynote speakers were Pertti Vakkari from Finland’s University of Tampere and Susan Dumais from Microsoft. Dr. Vakkari spoke about “Information Search Processes in Complex Tasks,” focusing on key areas in information retrieval, such as how the effect of information search would depend on task outcome. Dr. Dumais’s talk, entitled, “Better Together: Interdisciplinary Perspective on Information Retrieval,” reflected on her work in Information Retrieval and Human-Computer Interaction and provided some predictions on the future of search on the Web.

The major areas of study discussed at CHIIR 2018 included user-centered aspects of information interaction and information retrieval focusing on aspects of human involvement in search activities, and information seeking and use in context.

InfoSeeking Lab Director Chirag Shah said, “I’m very proud of InfoSeekers for representing our lab at this international conference – not just with their scholarly contributions (papers, posters, demos, doctoral consortium), but also in helping organize this event.”

Susan Dumais of Microsoft taking questions following her keynote address.
There were 22 full papers, two dozen short papers (posters), five demos, 10 doctoral dissertation proposals, four tutorials, and two workshops.
Most attendees participated in sessions on full papers, short papers,
demonstrations, and the doctoral consortium.
InfoSeekers at the welcome reception at Zimmerli Art Museum. InfoSeekers contributed four full papers, some short papers, a couple of demos, and a doctoral consortium presentation.
Nick Belkin, Pertti Vakkari and Souvick Ghosh at the Welcome Reception at the Zimmerli Art Museum on the Rutgers campus, which featured the exhibition “Set in Stone: Lithography in Paris, 1815-1900.”
The banquet dinner was held at Ria Mar, a Portuguese restaurant in New Brunswick. A highlight was seeing Chirag warm up the dance floor. (Did you know he’s a trained ballroom
dancer?!)
This year’s conference was sponsored by Siemens, Rutgers SC&I, Google, and Microsoft.
A snap of the student get-together at the Hub City Brewhouse in New Brunswick.
CHIIR 2019 will be held in Glasgow, Scotland. Looking forward to 2020, the conference will be in Vancouver, Canada, and in 2021, Canberra, Australia.

Photo credits: Souvick Ghosh, Matt Mitsui, Chirag Shah.

Cheers for CHIIR!

Cheers for CHIIR!

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Once again, the InfoSeekers experienced great success at an international conference! Last week, many lab members traveled to Oslo, Norway for CHIIR 2017. Mortals may call it the annual Conference on Human Information Interaction & Retrieval.

It was a chilly week, but that didn’t stop anyone from doing what they do best: having fun with their research! Manasa Rath, Yiwei Wang, Shawan Sarkar and Jiqun Liu presented posters, while Long Lee presented a paper on Community Question & Answering services.

But it wasn’t all work and no play! Participants were able to enjoy a wonderful banquet with a rather scenic backdrop and even visit the Nobel Peace Center.

All in all, it was a conference well-spent! And guess what? Seekers won’t have to travel far for CHIIR 2018…it’s happening right in New Brunswick!

Seeking to Succeed

Seeking to Succeed

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Web 2.0. Social media. Collaborative information seeking. Social information seeking. Information seeking technology. Information seeking failures. Social Q&A. Information seeking behaviors.

 

What do the above concepts have in common? They represent only some of the relevant and fascinating topics explored by members of the InfoSeeking Lab. Through various research endeavors, conference presentations, and publications, InfoSeekers pave the way for more efficient and effective information seeking practices to come to life. And, if we do say so ourselves, they do quite an excellent job.

 

So how can you keep track of everything our Seekers are doing? You can visit their individual profiles, our lab’s Accomplishments page, and a list of their current projects. You can also get a retrospective and current updates from our Facebook page. But, for now, here’s a round-up of some exciting events from 2016 conferences that you may have missed.

 

Lab member Long Le, along with Director Chirag Shah and former InfoSeeker Erik Choi, won best student paper at JCDL (Joint Conference on Digital Libraries) 2016  in Newark, NJ for “Evaluating the Quality of Education Answers in Community Question-Answering.”

long

Dongho Choi won the best presentation award at the SIGIR (Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval) 2016 Doctoral Consortium in Pisa, Italy for “A Study on Information Seeking Behavior Using Physical and Online Explorations.”

dongho dongho2

Keep checking in to find out what we do next!