UKeiG Zoom Lecture: 6th Tony Kent Strix Annual Memorial Lecture 2020

Thursday, 26th November 2020 - 2 pm to 4.30 pm (FREE Event)

Professor Cox’s 2020 Strix lecture is entitled: ‘Analysing Web searches for public good: inferring the health of populations and individuals.’
Abstract: Traditionally, information retrieval seeks to find relevant content (e.g. documents, images, videos) in response to a user’s query. However, a user’s queries also reveal information about the user. This information can be used for many purposes, including personalising Web search results, and facilitating personalised/targeted advertising. In this talk, I will describe ongoing work we are conducting that analyses users’ Web searches to infer the health of populations and individuals. At the population level, we discuss methods to estimate prevalence and virulence of a disease, and effectiveness of national public health interventions (vaccines and changes to law). Our work has mainly focused on influenza, but we will also report recent work on covid-19. At an individual level, we discuss methods to stratify users into disease risk groups, and to predict the likelihood of specific diseases, including some forms of cancer. These methods have a variety of advantages for public health surveillance and individual health. However, these same methods raise significant privacy and ethical concerns. We discuss technical solutions to address privacy at a population level and highlight concerns at an individual level.

We are also delighted to announce that Martin White will open the event with a presentation entitled ‘Defining the enterprise search experience.’ 
Abstract: There is a great deal of interest at present around the topic of the digital employee experience (DEX).  Enterprise search is a very important discovery and integration platform and yet little attention (and no research) has been paid to the user experience of enterprise search. In this presentation Martin White will present his view of what the elements should be of the enterprise search experience based on projects he has undertaken in the last two decades.

Martin White is Managing Director of Intranet Focus Ltd and a Visiting Professor at the Information School, University of Sheffield. He started using online search services in 1973 and set up a specialist search business in 1979. He is the author of four books on enterprise search. Martin is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Chemistry and of the British Computer Society, and worked with Dr Tony Kent when he was at UK Chemical Information Service.