Science@Cal Lecture Series: February 2014

On February 15 our talk will be given by Prof. Marti Hearst and will be entitled “Natural Search User Interfaces”.

PLEASE NOTE: THIS TALK TAKES PLACE IN STANLEY HALL (THE QB3 BUILDING) ROOM 105

What does the future hold for search user interfaces? 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.

Marti Hearst is a professor in the School of Information at UC Berkeley, with an affiliate appointment in the Computer Science Division. Her primary research interests are user interfaces for search engines, information visualization, natural language processing, and improving Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). She wrote the first book on Search User Interfaces.

Prof. Hearst was named a Fellow of the ACM in 2013 and has received an NSF CAREER award, an IBM Faculty Award, two Google Research Awards, an Okawa Foundation Fellowship, two Excellence in Teaching Awards, and has been principal investigator for more than $3M in research grants. She received BA, MS, and PhD degrees in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley, and she was a Member of the Research Staff at Xerox PARC from 1994 to 1997.