The Information Retrieval [IR] group is a part of the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. IR group members include 7 professors, 7 PhD students and 4 Masters students [Members].

Research Areas: Information Retrieval Group is involved in several areas of research from File System Search to Speech Information Retrieval. Our primary research interests are towards -

• Designing expressive languages, effective retrieval techniques, and efficient storage and indexing methods for managing XML
  and other structured and semi-structured textual data.
• Designing scalable technologies for distributed information retrieval systems based on an architecture built from a cluster of  workstations using standard PC hardware.
• Developing and testing a methodology for evaluating email spam filters.
• Developing a filesystem search system, addressing issues of performance, Security and effectiveness.
• Designing fine-grained access control mechanisms for securing text data against unauthorized access or manipulation.
• Investigating the problems that may be solved by searching a collection of documents from a large enterprise, such as the identification of in-house experts in a specific domain.
• Designing stand-alone XML data management systems and augmenting the capabilities of other database management
  systems to manage XML data.

---