The Strix award honours outstanding contributions to the field in memory of Tony Kent, a remarkable IR pioneer. It was inaugurated in 1998 by the Institute of Information Scientists and is now presented by UKeiG in partnership with the International Society for Knowledge Organisation UK (ISKO UK), the Royal Society of Chemistry Chemical Information and Computer Applications Group (RSC CICAG) and the British Computer Society Information Retrieval Specialist Group (BCS IRSG). Whereas at the time of Kent’s ground-breaking achievements IR was a fascinating sideline for relatively few specialists, nowadays the Search function underpins everyday living at home, at work and across the globe. This Award is more widely relevant than ever before.
Nicola’s IR research focuses on evaluation, from both a theoretical and an experimental perspective. He chairs the Steering Committee of CLEF (Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum), the internationally renowned European initiative for the evaluation of multilingual and multimodal information access systems, and through his efforts has made it central to the IR evaluation community. He was inducted into the Special Interest Group in Information Retrieval (SIGIR ) Academy in 2023 in recognition of his significant research, innovation and service delivery.
The Strix judging panel noted that his contributions to IR are extensive, evidenced by an outstanding and impactful publications record. It would like to congratulate him on his prolific and significant leadership and contribution to the profession on multiple fronts.
Nicola was delighted to receive the news and will celebrate his award in a special free Zoom lecture on the afternoon of Thursday January 9th 2025, where he will reflect on the challenges and opportunities of generative AI on the IR community.
Book here for your free place.