SIS, Director Diane Kelly Partner in PhD Training Grant
Director Diane Kelly and the School of Information Sciences are participating as a partner organization in a Marie Curie Doctoral Training Network grant. The grant was recently awarded to a team of eight researchers working in institutions located in five different European countries including Austria, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands and United Kingdom.
The University of Tennessee, Knoxville SIS is one of 14 partner organizations located across the globe participating in the network. Marie Curie Training Networks bring together universities, research institutions, and other sectors from across the world to train researchers to the doctorate level. Director Kelly’s role includes instructing PhD student researchers about user-centered system evaluation and research ethics, and hosting two visiting scholars at UTK.
The project, Domain Specific Systems for Information Extraction and Retrieval, focuses on the creation of applications, models and methods to assist professional searchers who work in the domains of healthcare, science and technology innovation, and law.
“When many people think of ‘search,’ they think of Google, and perhaps of some leisurely information need, but there are many areas where highly trained searchers with sophisticated search skills are needed to find very complex and specialized information,” said Kelly. “These are often adversarial situations where the stakes are high and the information systems are built and refined on-demand; for example, in legal discovery and patent search. Training researchers who can develop these systems and assist professional searchers is a natural place where computer science and information science connect. It will be great to play a role in helping educate these researchers about designing and conducting user-centered evaluations.”