{"id":306518,"date":"2009-07-20T09:00:12","date_gmt":"2009-07-20T16:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/?p=306518"},"modified":"2016-10-17T13:46:41","modified_gmt":"2016-10-17T20:46:41","slug":"sigir-2009-seeking-better-search","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/blog\/sigir-2009-seeking-better-search\/","title":{"rendered":"SIGIR 2009: Seeking Better Search"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Rob Knies, Managing Editor, Microsoft Research<\/em><\/p>\n

Organizing threaded discussions. Using reasoning to rank answers on community sites. Predicting click-through rates for news queries. Assessing how crawl policies affect the effectiveness of Web search. Taking context into consideration when classifying queries and predicting user interests.<\/p>\n

Much remains to be solved in the field of information retrieval. That becomes obvious just by scanning the list of papers to be presented by Microsoft Research during SIGIR 2009<\/a>, the 32nd annual conference sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery\u2019s Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The event, to be held in Boston from July 19-23 at the Sheraton Boston Hotel and Northeastern University, will feature 74 accepted papers, in addition to a busy schedule packed with tutorials, workshops, posters, demonstrations, and talks. And of those accepted papers, no fewer than 21\u201528 percent\u2015come from Microsoft Research.<\/p>\n

That should come as little surprise. Microsoft Research has a history of strong participation in SIGIR. Over the past four years, 58 papers from the organization\u2019s labs have been accepted for presentation during this prestigious conference, an indication of how seriously Microsoft is taking its goals of refining and advancing the state of the art in information retrieval.<\/p>\n

Microsoft Research\u2019s support for SIGIR is hardly limited to papers, either. Five workshops to be conducted July 23 feature Microsoft Research personnel. Four of the paper sessions will be chaired by researchers from the organization. Of 104 posters to be displayed during the gathering, 12 will be from Microsoft Research, which is also contributing one demonstration and a talk during the industry track of the conference. Microsoft Research is a gold sponsor for SIGIR 2009.<\/p>\n

Three of Microsoft Research\u2019s six labs worldwide are well represented in the paper presentations, with Microsoft Research Asia<\/a> contributing eight, and both Microsoft Research Redmond<\/a> and Microsoft Research Cambridge<\/a> being responsible for six. Another is a joint effort between the latter lab and Microsoft Research Silicon Valley. In addition, two other papers have been submitted by authors from elsewhere in Microsoft.<\/p>\n

Meng Wang and Xian-Sheng Hua of Microsoft Research Asia, along with Bo Liu of the University of Science and Technology of China, will conduct a demonstration on July 20 entitled Accommodating Colorblind Users in Image Search.<\/p>\n

Two days later, danah boyd<\/a> of Microsoft Research New England<\/a> is to deliver an industry-track discussion called The Searchable Nature of Acts in Networked Publics.<\/p>\n

Natasa Milic-Frayling of Microsoft Research Cambridge acts as session chair for a July 20 collection of papers called Recommenders I. Tie-Yan Liu<\/a> of Microsoft Research Asia chairs the Learning to Rank I session on the morning of July 21, and that afternoon, Susan Dumais<\/a> of Microsoft Research Redmond will chair the Interactive Search session. The following morning, it\u2019s Tetsuya Sakai\u2019s turn, during a session entitled Evaluation and Measurement I.<\/p>\n

Microsoft Research attendees will be busy collaborating with academic partners during the July 23 workshops, participating in five:<\/p>\n