Survey on Personalized Information Retrieval

PhD Qualifying Examination


Title: "Survey on Personalized Information Retrieval"

by

Mr. Pengfei ZHAO


Abstract:

When users perform a search, they should have a specific goal in mind.
However, due to the fact that queries are mostly short and polysemous, it
is important for search engines to consider individual user's context
when they issue the query and retrieve the search results tailored to
user's  specific needs. A context refers to the environment around a user
that reflects or affects the user's search goal. Web search
personalization is the process that allows a search engine to adapt the
search results to user's specific goal by incorporating user's context
information beyond the query provided. Effective search engine
personalization techniques involve two major challenges: (1) accurately
identifying the user context and (2) model the context information such
that it can be effectively integrated into the existed information
retrieval model, by which the search results can be organized in a way
that can match the particular context of the user. This paper presents a
systematic literature survey on state-of-the-art search engine
personalization techniques focusing on the above two challenges. First, we
review some classical retrieval models (e.g. the vector space model, Okapi
BM25, Kullback-Leibler divergence).We then introduce several types of
contexts which may differentiate a user from others when he/she performs
search, e.g., the short term search session, the long term search history,
user??s click-through history, the geographic location influence, the
social influence, etc. With respect to each type of context, we introduce
methods to model it and to incorporate it into the existed retrieval
model, by which personalization effects can be achieved.


Date:			Wednesday, 11 September 2013

Time:                   10:00am - 12:00noon

Venue:                  Room 3402
                         lifts 17/18

Committee Members:	Prof. Dik-Lun Lee (Supervisor)
 			Dr. Wilfred Ng (Chairperson)
 			Dr. Raymond Wong
 			Dr. Ke Yi


**** ALL are Welcome ****