FST Graduate Research Topic

Research Topic: Search engine enhancement via language and knowledge processing
Suggested By: Dunwei (Grant) Wen
Last Update: September 2nd, 2009

Search engine, more formally information retrieval (IR) system, is a now a necessity in our work and everyday life. However, current search engines like Google lack of the capability to understand search contents and contexts. This research project will make use of natural language and knowledge processing techniques for enhancing search engine. First, more semantic analysis will be implemented to provide deeper understanding of either questions and answers. Second, domain-related ontologies will be involved to facilitate the recognizability of the search content. Third, contextual information of the search task such as user information and domain knowledge will be taken into consideration. For example, natural language processing (NLP) techniques including syntactic analysis (e.g. part-of-speech tagging and dependency parsing) and semantic analysis (e.g. semantic parsing and semantic role labelling) will be applied in the project. The graduate students who want to pursue the research need to be familiar with information retrieval and artificial intelligence, especially machine learning, natural language processing, and knowledge representation. Background in business intelligence and data mining is also necessary. This research topic is suitable for Project or Thesis.