Communications - December 2012

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seaRchinG foR
betteR soLutions norbert Fuhr discusses his work on information retrieval (ir) almost like a professor explaining an incomplete grade on a student’s term paper: there’s still much left to be done. “i think most users are
quite satisfied with the quality
of ir they’re experiencing, at
least for routine tasks,” says
Fuhr, leader of the duisburg
information engineering
group at the University of
duisburg-essen. “But ir is not
an engineering science yet. We
are not able to make predictions
for new applications involving
new document collections,
search-task types, or relevance
criteria. Many organizations
have such applications, but only
for a restricted user community.
We should collect empirical
evidence for a broader range of
collections, information needs,
and notions of relevance.”
Fuhr is widely considered
one of the leading pioneers in
research to benefit the search
industry, making significant
advances in the development of
probabilistic retrieval models
for databases and XML. of
special note is his research on
models that paved the way for
ranked approaches in search
operations. For these and other
contributions, acM sigir
honored Fuhr with the 2012
gerard salton award.
Fuhr is now focusing on
context and customization.
system functionality should
support a wide range of
information-access needs, he
says, and the interface experiences
should be tailored for different
user groups and task categories.
“For a current project in the
medical domain, for example,
we’re developing different
interfaces for laymen, medical
practitioners, and radiologists.
My grand vision is about systems
being able to manage all kinds
of information—facts, texts, or
multimedia—with these systems
being aware of the user’s current
work task and then providing the
necessary information.”
—Dennis McCafferty