CIIR Timeline

August 2023
Conversational Information Seeking book published
July 2023
Hamed Zamani receives ACM SIGIR 2023 Early Career Excellence in Research Award and the ACM SIGIR 2023 Excellence in Community Engagement Award
July 2023
CIIR researchers receive ACM SIGIR 2023 Best Student Paper Award and ACM ICTIR 2023 Best Paper Honorable Mention
May 2023
CIIR hosts Learning and Language Technologies Symposium
February 2023
CIIR Team selected for 2nd year to participate in Amazon Alexa Prize Challenge 2022-2023
September 2022
CIIR celebrates 30th anniversary
June 2022
Hamed Zamani receives NSF CAREER award
September 2021
Negin Rahimi accepts CICS research faculty position
May 2021
CIIR Team Selected for 2021 Alexa Prize Challenge
February 2021
James Allan and Jamie Callan inducted into the ACM SIGIR Academy
January 2021
James Allan named ACM Fellow
January 2021
Bruce Croft named IEEE Fellow
January 2021
CIIR Leadership Team Changes
September 2020
Bruce Croft selected for induction to the ACM SIGIR Academy
August 2020
CIIR Talk Series Established
July 2020
Hamed Zamani Joins CICS/CIIR Faculty
October 2019
CIIR Gathering during ICTIR 2019
July 2019
James Allan elected Treasurer of CRA Executive Committee
September 2018
CIIR Hosts UMass Amherst and Montreal IR Summit
July 2018
CIIR authors among top five at SIGIR 2018; papers chosen for awards
July 2018
Bloomberg Selects CIIR for 2018 Research Grant
May 2018
Bruce Croft Retires into Research-Only Role in CIIR
March 2018
James Allan named to CRA Board of Directors
September 2017
CIIR Marks its 25th Anniversary
September 2017
CIIR's 75th PhD student graduates
August 2017
CIIR paper chosen for SIGIR 2017 Test of Time Award Honorable Mention
June 2017
IR Textbook, “Search Engines: Information Retrieval in Practice,” surpasses 12,000 downloads
April 2017
Jamie Callan Receives CICS Outstanding Achievement in Research Award
February 2017
According to Google Scholar, the h-index for Bruce Croft is 95, James Allan is 62, and Andrew McCallum is 88.
July 2016
CIIR gathering during SIGIR 2016
July 2016
First Neu-IR Forum Organized
July 2016
CIIR honored with 6 ACM SIGIR Test of Time Awards and 2 Honorable Mention
May 2016
CIIR faculty visit Japan’s Hokkaido University to foster collaborative research
April 2016
New CIIR Website Unveiled
September 2015
Bruce Croft and James Allan chair ACM SIGIR ICTIR 2015, held in Northampton, MA.
July 2015
IR Textbook “Search Engines: Information Retrieval in Practice” made freely available on the Web
June 2015
James Allan named Chair of the CICS faculty
April 2015
Directed by Andrew McCallum, Center for Data Science formally launched
April 2015
Bruce Croft named Dean of newly established College of Information and Computer Sciences.
June 2014
IR Lab’s 1000th paper written
June 2014
Bruce Croft presented with the 2014 IEEE Computer Society Technical Achievement Award
October 2013
CIIR Alum Reunion held in CA during CIKM 2013
October 2013
Bruce Croft receives the UKeiG Tony Kent Strix Award
March 2013
Updated CIIR Website Unveiled
January 2013
DARPA BOLT project awarded
2012
CIIR Stats: 1000+ papers written; 7 faculty; 4 tech/research staff; 3 admin staff; 36 grad RAs; 1 Undergrad
December 2011
First binary version of Galago released
March 2011
CIIR embarks on IARPA Aladdin project
February 2011
IBM Watson competes against Jeopardy champions and wins. CIIR worked with IBM on their QA technology.
July 2010
James Allan begins a 3-year term as Chair of ACM SIGIR
2010
IR Textbook, written by W. Bruce Croft, Donald Metzler, and Trevor Strohman, published
October 2009
Mining a Million Books project starts, part of NSF Massive Data program
July 2009
CIIR reunion held during SIGIR ‘09
July 2009
James Allan - SIGIR 2009 General co-Chair
November 2008
New CIIR Website Unveiled
2008
OAQA OCR formed at IBM – UMass one of first four collaborators
February 2008
James Allan participates in IBM’s OAQA kick-off workshop
December 2007
CIIR Stats: 756 papers written; 7 faculty; 7 tech/research staff; 3 admin staff; 34 grad RAs; 10 Undergrads
2007
IBM’s Watson Jeopardy project begins using the CIIR’s Indri
June 2007
Flashback in time (developments outside the CIIR): First Apple iPhone Launched
September 2005
CIIR faculty receive DARPA GALE grant funding
October 2003
New CIIR website unveiled
September 2003
Andrew McCallum becomes a tenure-track Associate Professor and establishes IESL
July 2003
Bruce Croft receives ACM SIGIR Gerard Salton Award
May 2003
CIIR Stats: CIIR has $11.78 million in active awards; $30.79 million in funding since ‘92
2003
CIIR Stats: 7 faculty; 16 tech/research staff; 3 admin staff; 35 grad RAs; 5 Undergrads
2003
James Allan becomes co-Director of CIIR
2002
TREC 2002 results: high performing runs by CIIR
September 2002
Andrew McCallum joins CS/CIIR as Research Associate Professor
September 2002
CIIR Stats: 6 faculty; 16 tech/research staff; 3 admin staff; 20 grad RAs; 8 Undergrads. 83 members and 400 papers written since ’92
April 2002
TIDES 2 Project awarded
January 2002
First version of Indri and Lemur Toolkit released.
October 2001
CIIR participates in NSF National Science Digital Library (NSDL) projects
August 2001
NSF S/IUCRC grant that established CIIR ends.
July 2001
NSF Digital Government Project begins
June 2001
3rd year of REU site
June 2001
Bruce Croft named Chair of Dept. of CS
March 2001
James Allan serves as General Chair of the First International Conference on Human Language Technology Research
October 2000
CIIR organizes ISMIR 2000: 1st International Symposium on Music IR
June 2000
2nd year of REU site
2000
Lemur Project Starts
2000
Bruce Croft receives the ASIS&T Research Award
February 2000
Bruce Croft appointed Distinguished University Professor
November 1999
Move to new CS Building on campus
September 1999
Jamie Callan leaves for tenure track faculty position at CMU
September 1999
CIIR Stats: 60 members since ‘92 ; 9 faculty; 2 PostDocs; 12 tech/research staff; 3 admin staff; 27 grad RAs; 41 Undergrads
July 1999
TIDES 1 Translingual IR research project begins
June 1999
NSF REU Site established with James Allan as PI
September 1998
Flashback in time (developments outside the CIIR): Google Founded
September 1998
James Allan becomes tenure-track Assistant Professor
August 1998
Introduced language modeling as a formal framework for investigating IR
May 1998
CIIR Stats: 9 faculty; 3 PostDocs; 13 tech/research staff; 3 admin staff; 24 grad students; 28 IRUGS
March 1998
New CIIR website unveiled
1997
Topic Detection and Tracking (TDT) research program started by the CIIR (jointly with DARPA, CMU, and Dragon Systems)
May 1997
CIIR stats: 200+ papers written; CIIR software licensed to 200; 44 members; 9 faculty; 20 tech/research staff; 3 admin staff; 25 grad RAs; 19 on undergrad “IRUG” team
February 1997
Infoseek gets high rankings from multiple media sites on its search engine.
June 1996
Patent and Trademark Project Begins
April 1996
President Bill Clinton sends letter of thanks for the CIIR’s contributions
April 1996
CIIR’s Administrative Director Paul McOwen leaves for Sovereign Hill
April 1996
Sovereign Hill Software established
April 1996
CIIR Stats: 100+ papers written; InQuery licensed to 120; 45 members; 10 on undergrad “IRUG” team (from 0 the prior year)
April 1996
Netscape Browser features Infoseek as one of 5 search engines used on their web browser search page
1996
James Allan named Assistant Director of CIIR and Research Assistant Professor
January 1996
V.P. Al Gore released the first major upgrade of the White House Citizens’ Handbook that used CIIR technology
December 1995
Flashback in time (developments outside the CIIR): AltaVista launched Internet search engine
December 1995
CIIR unveils “Govbot” - first government information portal
October 1995
Jamie Callan becomes Assistant Director of CIIR
September 1995
CIIR Stats: 36 members including a number of notable government organizations
September 1995
U.S. General Services Administration contracts with CIIR to develop “Govbot”
June 1995
President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore unveiled the U.S. Business Advisor, an online information service using CIIR’s InQuery
June 1995
CIIR student interns at White House
May 1995
CIIR Stats: 80 papers written since start of CIIR; InQuery licensed to 52 organizations; $5M added to state economy this year; 22 tech/research staff; 27 PhD student RAs; 1 Ugrad; 2 MS
1995
STAR JOBS enhancements
January 1995
Newt Gingrich unveils U.S. LoC “Thomas” System developed by the CIIR
December 1994
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum using CIIR’s technology to access their archives over the Internet
December 1994
Two-day InQuery Tutorial held in Washington, D.C.
1994
U.S. Library of Congress unveils system to search their American Memory Collection using InQuery
September 1994
James Allan joins CIIR as PostDoctoral Research Associate
May 1994
CIIR works with U.S. Dept. of Commerce on MOSAIC interface for NTDB
June 1994
U.S. Library of Congress joins the CIIR
May 1994
InQuery 2.0 Windows version released
May 1994
CIIR Stats: 22 members; 7 faculty; 11 tech/research staff; 20 PhD RAs; 1 undergrad; 2 Master’s students
February 1994
Senator Kennedy Announces $3M to CIIR for Health Care Initiative
January 1994
Jamie Callan named Research Assistant Professor
January 1994
Infoseek’s Web search engine launched. Uses CIIR’s search software.
November 1993
Infoseek joins CIIR
November 1993
Flashback in time (developments outside the CIIR): Popular NCSA Mosaic web browser launched
November 1993
Two-day Text Retrieval and Extraction Course Held at CIIR
1993
Lotus Development Corp. uses InQuery for their customer support center
July 1993
Governor William Weld tests CIIR’s STAR-JOBS system
May 1993
CIIR Stats: 17 members; 7 faculty; 8 tech/research staff; 12 PhD student RAs
February 1993
Jamie Callan joins CIIR as Senior Postdoc
1992
West uses CIIR’s InQuery within their WIN system
1992
CIIR participates in TIPSTER projects
October 1992
ACSIOM provides technology transfer services for CIIR
September 1992
Bruce Croft - Director of CIIR
September 1992
Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval Established

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