Oleg Zendel

The AI boom is driving major price hikes for consumer electronics as AI chipmakers take first dibs on critical memory hardware. 📈 Read more, including thoughts from RMIT University's @olegzendel.bsky.social and UNSW's @suekeay.bsky.social: ia.acs.org.au/article/2026...

What happens when Google stops sending you to websites & starts answering questions itself? In this podcast episode ADM+S researchers Ashwin Nagappa, Oleg Zendel & Sara Al Lawati discuss what the future of search means for all of us bit.ly/48zWDK9 #GoogleSearch #AIMode

Researchers from the Australian Search Experience examine a crucial aspect of the information ecosystem: information producers and their reciprocal relationship with search engines Read more http://bit.ly/4n41xme #SEO #GenAI #SearchEngines

🌟Really excited to share the fourth Strategic Workshop on Information Retrieval (SWIRL) report published in SIGIR Forum! Paper 👉🏻 www.johannetrippas.com/papers/tripp... More info 👉🏻 sites.google.com/view/swirl20... #SWIRL2025 #SIGIR2026 #IR #GenAI #Research #CHIIR2026

A team from the ADM+S at RMIT University has taken out first place amongst 70 teams across 27 countries in the LiveRAG Challenge at SIGIR 2025, showcasing world-class innovation in Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) technologies admscentre.org/3IBFe8Z

Do not forget to participate in the #TREC2025 Tip-of-the-Tongue (ToT) Track :) The corpus and baselines (with run files) are now available and easily accessible via the ir_datasets API and the HuggingFace Datasets API. More details are available at: trec-tot.github.io/guidelines

Kun Ran, Shuoqi Sun, Khoi Nguyen Dinh Anh, Damiano Spina, Oleg Zendel RMIT-ADM+S at the SIGIR 2025 LiveRAG Challenge https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.14516

Excited to share that my amazing RMIT ADM+S team – @damianospina.com, Kun Ran, @shuoqisun.bsky.social, and Dinh Anh Khoi Nguyen – are global finalists in the #SIGIR #LiveRAG Challenge! I'm incredibly proud of everyone and what we've achieved. What a fantastic journey! 🎉

My first media interview, a great experience! I really enjoyed the conversation with @jtrippas.bsky.social from @rmitcomputing.bsky.social and Ellen Phiddian from @abcnewsbot.bsky.social. Thanks for the thoughtful discussion and the opportunity to share insights!

Are search engines getting worse—or is it time to rethink how we search? ADM+S researchers Oleg Zendel, Ashwin Nagappa & Johanne Trippas share insights on search quality, AI & what it means for how we find trustworthy information online @olegzendel.bsky.social @ashwinnag.bsky.social bit.ly/3F8sx44

Proceedings of the 2025 ACM SIGIR Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval #CHIIR2025 are now available at the ACM DL: dl.acm.org/doi/proceedi...

Super funds may be missing a basic safeguard to protect retirement savings.

IRRJ, the Information Retrieval Research Journal, is the new player in the information retrieval publication landscape. The first issue has recently been published. Have a look at irrj.org/index, and don't forget to follow @IRRJ.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy!

Fantastic keynote by Kathy Brennan at #CHIIR2025! Insightful points on UI design at Google moving beyond the 'average user' to truly personalize experiences. Thought-provoking and inspiring

Our @theconversation.com article discussing 4 ethical models of search engines is out! theconversation.com/what-makes-a... @admscentre.org.au @rmitcomputing.bsky.social @umbrellacorpn.bsky.social

@rankun203.bsky.social is presenting his Master's work at #CHIIR2025 in Melbourne. Exploring LLMs to improve query reformulation, showing promising results especially for poor queries. Contrary to prior studies of PRF query expansion, which works mostly for effective queries. Questions time 😄

There's something quasi-religious about the way some critics of AI declare their total abstinence from it, like a badge of moral purity. You can bet many of the same voices drive cars, eat factory-farmed meat, and otherwise engage with systems that have deep ethical and environmental costs.

ARC has “paused” future rounds of grant schemes pending outcomes of its NCGP Policy Review. All schemes previously scheduled to open before 1 July this year will go ahead. But next year’s Laureates, Industry Fellowships & Discovery Indigenous won’t. See table👇 & www.arc.gov.au/funding-rese...

Here’s a report by John Ross in @timeshighered.bsky.social on ARC Board’s proposal to change grant schemes ▶️ www.timeshighereducation.com/news/arc-gra... [Free login required] Both @scienceau.bsky.social's & I am worried about opportunities & unintended consequences for early-career researchers👇

An interesting 🧵 worth having a look at

Soaking up (possibly) the last bit of summer this weekend - while wrapping up my reviews!

ALL RESEARCHERS ❗️Speak up❗️ if you have opinions, critique or ideas on proposed changes to Australian Research Council grants. Discuss & distill ideas, sure, but to be considered you MUST make a submission ▶️ submit.dese.gov.au/jfe/form/SV_... It’s EASY! Answer these questions in the form👇

Captain it's Wednesday

The ARC Board has proposed a major shake-up of the National Competitive Grants Program ▶️ www.arc.gov.au/engage-us/co... I've only skimmed so far, but they propose reducing 13 grant schemes to 6, with intent & scope in the table👇 Submissions are being accepted in response until 13 April. Get to it!

The list of accepted papers, workshops, and tutorials for #CHIIR2025 are now online! chiir2025.github.io/schedule.html

Auschwitz was at the end of a long process. It did not start from gas chambers. This hatred was gradually developed by humans. From ideas, words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanization & escalating violence... to systematic and industrial murder. Auschwitz took time.

That didn't take long! Nomic AI has finetuned the new ModernBERT-base encoder model into a strong embedding model for search, classification, clustering and more! Details in 🧵

Hohoho! 🎅🏼🎄 Our book chapter “Adapting Generative Information Retrieval Systems to Users, Tasks, and Scenarios” is now online! w/ @jtrippas.bsky.social @umbrellacorpn.bsky.social @rmitcomputing.bsky.social @admscentre.org.au #GenIR #GenAI link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

New year, new insights! 🎉 Our book chapter "Adapting Generative Information Retrieval Systems to Users, Tasks, and Scenarios" is now online! w/ @jtrippas.bsky.social @damianospina.com @umbrellacorpn.bsky.social @rmitcomputing.bsky.social #GenIR #GenAI #SIGIR link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

We invite PhD students to submit your work and join us at PhD Symposium @TheWebConf 2025, (www2025.thewebconf.org/phd-symposium). The submission due date is 18 Dec, 2024 (AOE)! We will see you in the beautiful and amazing Sydney down under! #WWW2025 #WebConf2025

ADM+S has been awarded $6 million in funding for a new three-year project to collect data on the digital inclusion experiences of First Nations people in urban, regional and remote areas across Australia @Telstra #DigitalInclusion bit.ly/3VDzUFF

Improvised social mixer after a long Day 2! #sigirap2024 #naarm @olegzendel.bsky.social @admscentre.org.au

We managed to squeeze in an improvised quick visit to the State Library of Victoria during the lunch break. #sigirap2024 #naarm #melbourne @olegzendel.bsky.social @admscentre.org.au

I'm hiring! if you're a specialist in computing education, and you want to work with a really lovely team, please consider applying: www.seek.com.au/computer-sci...

Starting Day 2 of #SIGIRAP2024 with a thought provoking talk on Generative IR evaluation by @iroldie.bsky.social. Tackling some controversial topics is a perfect way to re-energize after last night’s social mixer 😄 @rmitcomputing.bsky.social @admscentre.org.au

Excellent keynote by Peter Bailey from Canva about how to build a more cost-effective online & offline experimentation framework #sigirap2024 #melbourne #naarm @admscentre.org.au @rmitcomputing.bsky.social

Noticed it should be #sigirap2024

We've kicked off the #SIGIR-AP2024 Satellite event at @rmitcomputing.bsky.social in Melbourne with a great keynote by Peter Bailey from #canva. Moving on to the hybrid talks in Tokyo. In the photos a taste of the talks and @damianospina.com acknowledging Country with Indigenous artwork on IR #ADMS

📢 Excited about IR in Australia? Join us at the SIGIR-AP Satellite Event at RMIT! 🎙️ Morning sessions (9:30–11:00) are FREE & open to all. 🌟 Full-day access is available with online SIGIR-AP registration. Don’t miss the keynote by Peter Bailey from Canva! 🔗 shorturl.at/4WD2e #SIGIRAP2024 #RMIT

I spoke to the NewYork Times about the impact of the #socialmediaban “Critics say there are major unanswered questions about how the law will be enforced, how users’ privacy will be protected and, fundamentally, whether the ban will actually protect children.” www.nytimes.com/2024/11/28/w...

Yesterday was an improvement for Discovery Projects. An extra ~$110 million was invested compared to last year (which was a low point). It replaces rapid loss in last 2 years & aligns investment with the last 12 years (adjusted for inflation). Not enough, but a start!