My research interests include various aspects of information retrieval, recommender systems, and text mining. My major contributions and current research focus include:<\/p>\n
Neural Information Retrieval<\/strong>: Following our initial study on distributed representations for information retrieval (ICTIR16a<\/a>,\u00a0ICTIR16b<\/a>,\u00a0CIKM16<\/a>), we have developed multiple neural network models for the fundamental IR tasks. They include relevance-based word embedding (SIGIR17a<\/a>), context-aware query representation (WWW17<\/a>), and semi-structured document representation (WSDM18<\/a>). We have also invented the first learning to rank model that can retrieve (as opposed to re-rank) documents from large-scale collections, called standalone neural ranking model (CIKM18a<\/a>).<\/p>\n Weak Supervision for IR<\/strong>: We have developed a student-teacher learning model for training machine learning IR models with no labeled data, called\u00a0weak supervision<\/em>. We have empirically shown the effectiveness of weak supervision in various IR tasks, including ad-hoc retrieval (SIGIR17b<\/a>), representation learning (SIGIR17a<\/a>), and query performance prediction (SIGIR18a<\/a>). We have also theoretically study weak supervision for information retrieval (ICTIR18<\/a>). Check out our SIGIR 2018 workshop on learning from limited or noisy data (LND4IR<\/a>).<\/p>\n Conversational Information Seeking<\/strong>: I have been working on conversational search and recommendation with a focus on\u00a0mixed-initiative interactions<\/strong>, such as asking clarifying questions. We have designed and implemented an extensible platform for conversational information seeking research, called\u00a0Macaw<\/em>\u00a0(see the GitHub repository<\/a>). We have developed models for generating and selecting clarifying questions (WWW20<\/a>,\u00a0SIGIR20a<\/a>), models for utilizing user response to clarifying questions (SIGIR20b<\/a>), and offline evaluation methodologies for asking clarifying questions in conversational systems (SIGIR19a<\/a>). I have recently started new directions related to\u00a0multi-modal conversational information seeking<\/strong>\u00a0(SIGIR21<\/a>). We will participate in the Alexa Prize 2021 (see this news article<\/a>). Related to conversational search, we have implemented a unified search framework for mobile devices (SIGIR18b<\/a>,\u00a0CIKM18b<\/a>).<\/p>\n IR Meets RecSys<\/strong>: I have made efforts on bridging the gap between the IR and RecSys communities. We have modeled query expansion as collaborative filtering (CIKM16<\/a>), proposed content-based recommendation models using IR techniques (RecSys17<\/a>,\u00a0IRJ18<\/a>), and designed a joint search and recommendation model (DESIRES18<\/a>,\u00a0WSDM20<\/a>). I co-organized the ACM Recommender Systems Challenge in 2018 on music playlist generation and continuation, which can be seen as a RecSys or IR task (RecSys18<\/a>). Check out our visions on music recommendation (IJMIR18<\/a>) and the overview of ACM RecSys Challenge 2018 (TIST19<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My research interests include various aspects of information retrieval, recommender systems, and text mining. My major contributions and current research focus include: Neural Information Retrieval: Following our initial study on distributed representations for information retrieval (ICTIR16a,\u00a0ICTIR16b,\u00a0CIKM16), we have developed multiple neural network models for the fundamental IR tasks. They include relevance-based word embedding (SIGIR17a), context-aware … Continue reading “Research Topics”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-196","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","hfeed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/groups.cs.umass.edu\/zamani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/groups.cs.umass.edu\/zamani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/groups.cs.umass.edu\/zamani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/groups.cs.umass.edu\/zamani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/groups.cs.umass.edu\/zamani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/groups.cs.umass.edu\/zamani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197,"href":"https:\/\/groups.cs.umass.edu\/zamani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/196\/revisions\/197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/groups.cs.umass.edu\/zamani\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}