PhD Position, University of Twente, The Netherlands

March 27, 2009

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PhD position Distributed Information Retrieval (1 fte)

The University of Twente is an entrepreneurial research university, located in Enschede, the Netherlands. Organized over five faculties, the UT offers 20 educational programs ranging from applied physics, public and business administration, communication studies and diverse programs in engineering technology.

The Computer Science department of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS) is one of the largest academic institutions in computer science in the Netherlands. It provides courses in Technical Computer Science, Business Information Technology, and Telematics. In addition, the department contributes to computer science education within other academic programs. The research of the department, spearheaded by telematics and information technology, is part of the multidisciplinary research institute Centre for Telematics and Information Technology (CTIT). The department has about 220 permanent staff members and 1200 students.

Project description

The Database Group of the University of Twente offers a job opening in the NWO Vidi Project “Distributed Information Retrieval by means of Keyword Auctions”.

The project’s aim is to distribute internet search functionality in such a way that communities of users and/or federations of small search systems provide search services in a collaborative way. Instead of getting all data to a centralized point and process queries centrally, as is done by today’s search systems, the project will distribute queries over many small autonomous search systems and process them locally.

In this project, the PhD student will research a new approach to distribute search: distributed information retrieval by means of keyword auctions. Keyword auctions like Google’s AdWords give advertisers the opportunity to provide targeted advertisements by bidding on specific keywords. Analogous to these keyword auctions, local search systems will bid for keywords at a central broker. They “pay” by serving queries for the broker. The broker will send queries to those local search systems that optimize the overall effectiveness of the system, i.e., local search systems that are willing to serve many queries, but also are able to provide high quality results.

The PhD student will work within a small team of researchers that approaches the problem from three different angles:

1.	modeling the local search system, including models for automatic bidding and multi-word keywords

2.	modeling the search broker’s optimization using the bids, the quality of the answers, and click-through rates

3.	integration of structured data typically available behind web forms of local search systems with text search

The approaches will be evaluated using prototype systems and simulations on benchmark test collections.

Relation to other projects

The proposed research will be done in co-operation with several important players in the search and peer-to-peer markets. Together with Yahoo Research. the University of Twente runs the project “Radical Decentralization of Search”. With, WCC Smart Search and Match the University of Twente collaborates on “Federated search on user-enhanced data”. At Delft University, the Information and Communication Theory group investigates “Collaborative Search and Recommendation in P2P Systems” in Tribler.

What we ask

·	Candidates should have a background in one or more of the following areas: information retrieval, databases, artificial intelligence, applied mathematics, demonstrated by a M.Sc. degree in for instance computer science.

·	Candidates should be fluent in English. An interview will be part of the selection procedure.

·	Candidates should have good software development skills.

What we offer

We offer a full-time PhD position in a dynamic and international environment. The duration of the contracts is four years. The gross salary will range from € 2.042,00 in the first year to € 2.612,00 per month in the fourth year.

Additionally, the University of Twente provides excellent facilities for professional and personal development. In addition, we offer a holiday allowance (amounts to 8%) and an end-of-year bonus of 8.3% (which is approximately an extra month of salary) and a number of additional benefits. The labor agreements are in accordance with the CAO-NU for Dutch universities.

Information and application

Information can be obtained from Dr.ir. Djoerd Hiemstra, email: hiemstra-at-cs.utwente.nl. You are invited to send your application letter together with curriculum vitae, a list of publications, a list of courses you have followed (with grades), and the names and addresses of two referees, before April 19, 2009 by email or on paper to our secretary, email: db_secr@ewi.utwente.nl, Faculty of EEMCS, University of Twente, Zilverling 3047, P.O. Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands, phone: +31 53 489 3690.

Please refer to the vacancy number 09/051.

Scholarship Tags: Netherlands, PhD, Position, Twente, University