The CIIR Talk Series is an initiative for researchers and practitioners working on information retrieval and related disciplines to present their work. Presentations will be held biweekly on Fridays from 1:30 - 2:30 p.m. (with some exceptions) for the Spring 2025 semester. The presentations will be online (unless noted that they are in person) and open to the public. The presentations will also be shown in CS 151 for those on the UMass Amherst campus.
Faculty Host: Hamed Zamani
To receive notifications for talks and links to the presentations, subscribe to our mailing list by sending an email to ciir-talks-request@cs.umass.edu with "subscribe" as the email subject (without the quotation marks).
You can view prior CIIR Talk Series presentations on our YouTube Channel.
Spring 2025 Schedule of Speakers
Friday - February 28, 2025 - 1:30 - 2:30 PM EST (North American Eastern Standard Time)
Talk Title: From RAG to Long-context Models: Benchmarks and Model Developments
Speaker: Danqi Chen, Princeton Univ.
Friday - March 14, 2025 - 10:30 - 11:30 AM EDT (North American Eastern Daylight Saving Time)
Talk Title: Dynamic and Parametric Retrieval Augmented Generation
Speaker: Qingyao Ai, Tsinghua Univ.
Friday - March 28, 2025 - 1:30 - 2:30 PM EDT (North American Eastern Daylight Saving Time)
Talk Title: Evaluating Generative IR Systems
Speaker: Ian Soboroff, NIST
Friday - April 11, 2025 - 1:30 - 2:30 PM EDT (North American Eastern Daylight Saving Time) POSTPONED TO A LATER DATE
Talk Title: TBD
Speaker: Eduard C. Dragut, Temple Univ.
Friday - April 25, 2025 - 1:30 - 2:30 PM EDT (North American Eastern Daylight Saving Time)
Talk Title: Is the Search Engine of the Future a Chatbot?
Speaker: Suzan Verberne, Leiden Univ.
Zoom Link: Subscribe to mailing list (details above) for Zoom Link/Passcode notifications; or click here for Zoom link and reach out to Hamed Zamani or Dan Parker for the passcode.
Friday - May 9, 2025 - 1:30 - 2:30 PM EDT (North American Eastern Daylight Saving Time)
Talk Title: Search, Recommendation, and Sea Monsters: Mapping the Landscape of Fairness and Social Impact in Information Access
Speaker: Michael Ekstrand, Drexel University
