From Recommendation to Reputation: Information Discovery Gets Personal

Speaker: Barry Smyth
Affiliation: University College Dublin
Biography: Prof. Barry Smyth holds the Digital Chair of Computer Science in University College Dublin.He is the Director of CLARITY

These lectures will focus on how personalization techniques and recommender systems are being used in response to the information overload problem that face web users everyday. Personalization research brings together ideas from artificial intelligence, user profiling, information retrieval and user-interface design to provide users with more proactive and intelligent information services that are capable of predicting the needs of individuals and adapting to their implicit preferences. We will review core ideas from recommender systems research, drawing on the many practical examples that have underpinned modern web success stories, from e-commerce to mobile applications. In addition we will explore how the next generation of web search is likely to be influenced by recommender systems techniques that can facilitate a more social and collaborative approach to web search, which complements the purely algorithmic focus of contemporary search engines.

Programme:
Physics: Lecture Theatre B: 11.00-12.00noon
Purdie: Lecture Theatre A:14.0-17.00

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Event details

  • When: 22nd June 2011
  • Series: Distinguished Lectures Series
  • Format: Lecture

Towards Pervasive Personal Data

Dr Graham Kirby, Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, University of St Andrews.

This talk will outline an embryonic project to develop a software infrastructure supporting pervasive data, in which file data will flow automatically to the places that it is needed. Equilibrium will be achieved when the data reaches all the necessary places. When the equilibrium is perturbed, due to either the data or the necessary places changing, the infrastructure will react to restore the equilibrium by initiating new data flows.

The infrastructure will approximate the ideal of all of a user’s files being available at all locations all of the time. The user will be able to exert high-level influence on how this approximation is achieved, by specifying the desired equilibrium declaratively. The user will also be able to define policy that influences the priorities attached to restoring various non-equilibrium aspects of the system.

Event details

  • When: 5th May 2011 14:30 - 15:30
  • Where: Phys Theatre B
  • Series: CS Colloquia Series
  • Format: Colloquium