Zhai ‘s research spans several related fields including information retrieval, natural language processing, machine learning, data mining, and bioinformatics. His primary research interest is developing techniques for managing and exploiting large amounts of text information, such as news articles, email messages, scientific literature, government documents, and all kinds of Web pages.
“With the dramatic growth of online information, we are overwhelmed with huge amounts of information and have an urgent need for powerful software tools to help manage and make use of it,” explains Zhai. “I work on a variety of general techniques for searching, filtering, organizing, and mining text information and develop applications in multiple domains including Web, email, and literature.”
Zhai and his team are tackling the problem from a variety of angles, from personalized search, to text mining and information retrieval solutions that better enable task support and decision making capabilities.
IBM Faculty Awards is a competitive worldwide program intended to foster collaboration between researchers at leading universities worldwide and those in IBM research, development and services organizations; and promote courseware and curriculum innovation.
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Contact: , Department of Computer Science, 217/244-4943.
Writer: Jennifer LaMontagne, associate director of communications, Department of Computer Science, 217/333-4049.
If you have any questions about the College of Engineering, or other story ideas, contact Rick Kubetz, Engineering Communications Office, 217/244-7716, editor.