Marti Hearst, UC-Berkeley presents: 'Natural' Search Interfaces

Thursday, November 10, 2011 @12:30 p.m. EST,
University of Maryland, College Park
HCIL, 2105 Hornbake Building, South Wing
Guest speaker at weekly brown bag

Marti Hearst, UC-Berkeley presents:
'Natural' Search Interfaces

Abstract:
What does the future hold for search user interfaces? Following on a recently completed book on this topic, this talk identifies some important trends in the use of information technology and suggest how these may affect search in future. This includes is a notable trend towards more 'natural' user interfaces, a trend towards social rather than solo usage of information technology, and a trend in technology advancing the integration of massive quantities of user behavior and large-scale knowledge bases. These trends are, or will be, interweaving in various ways, which will have some interesting ramifications for search interfaces, and should suggest promising directions for research.

Biography:
Dr. Marti Hearst is a professor in the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley. She received BA, MS, and PhD degrees in Computer Science from UC Berkeley and was a Member of the Research Staff at Xerox PARC from 1994 to 1997.

A primary focus of Dr. Hearst's research is user interfaces for search. She just completed the first book on the topic of Search User Interfaces and she has invented or participated in several well-known search interface projects including the Flamenco project that investigated and the promoted the use of faceted metadata for collection navigation. Professor Hearst's other research areas include computational linguistics, information visualization, and analysis of social media.

Prof. Hearst has received an NSF CAREER award, an IBM Faculty Award, a Google Research Award, an Okawa Foundation Fellowship, two Excellence in Teaching Awards, and has been principle investigator for more than $3M in research grants.