About the School

QUARTZ is an Innovative Training Network that aims to educate its Early Stage Researchers (ESR) to adopt a novel theoretically and empirically motivated approach to Information Access and Retrieval based on the quantum mechanical framework that gives up the notions of unimodal features and classical ranking models disconnected from context.

The QUARTZ School is intended to train the ESRs in the multidisciplinary and intersectoral areas of QUARTZ including abstract vector spaces, probability, logic, machine learning, audio-visual information processing, and open quantum systems related to the IAR processes that occur when users interact with computer systems.

The school will be held at the Department of Information Engineering of the University of Padova (Italy) from February 7 to February 14, 2018. The school will consist in lectures provided by speakers both from academia and companies. The school will include the first QUARTZ Workshop.

 

Speakers

Dr. Roi Blanco (Amazon, Core Machine Learning, Spain)

Roi is a Senior Applied Scientist at the Amazon Core Machine Learning team, located in Barcelona (Spain). Prior to joining Amazon, he was a Senior Research Scientist at Yahoo Labs at London and Barcelona and research fellow at RMIT Melbourne. He is generally interested in applications of natural language processing for information retrieval, web search and mining and large scale information access in general, and has been active publishing at international conferences in those areas. He has industrial experience on large-scale search systems and applied machine learning. Previously he taught computer science at A Coruña University, from which he received his Ph.D. degree (cum laude) in 2008. Lecture
  • Introduction to Machine Learning

Dr. Toine Bogers (Aalborg University Copenhagen, Denmark)

Associate Professor Toine Bogers is interested in the design, development and evaluation of information access systems, that provide people with the content they need when it is most relevant to them. His research interests include recommendation and personalization technology, information retrieval & seeking, expert search, social media analytics, social computing, social tagging, information architecture, natural language processing, and machine learning. Lecture
  • Natural Language Processing and Computational Linguistics

Prof. Jerome Busemeyer (Indiana University, United States)

Jerome Busemeyer has published five books in decision and cognition, and over 100 journal articles across disciplines. He is funded by NSF, NIMH, and NIDA, and he served grant review panels for these agencies. He was the Manager of the Cognition and Decision Program at the Air Force Office of Scientific Research in 2005-2007. He served as the Chief Editor of Journal of Mathematical Psychology, Associate Editor of Psychological Review, and currently he is the founding Chief Editor of Decision. He is a fellow of the Society of Experimental Psychologists and he won the Warren medal from that society in 2015. He became a fellow of the Cognitive Science Society and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2017. In 2012, Cambridge University Press published his book with Peter Bruza introducing a new theory applying quantum probability to model human judgment and decision-making. Lecture
  • Theoretical foundations of quantum cognition

Dr. Emanuele Di Buccio (University of Padova, Italy)

Emanuele Di Buccio is a Post-doctoral Researcher at the Department of Information Engineering of the University of Padova. He received his PhD in Information Engineering at the University of Padova in 2011. His research mainly focuses on information access and retrieval methods. He gained further experience in design, development and evaluation of information access and retrieval systems as consultant both for research centres and companies. His research spans information retrieval models, distributed search, digital libraries and methodologies to support expert users in their specific knowledge domain. Lecture
  • Design and Evaluation of Machine Learning based Information Retrieval Systems

Marco Dussin and Ivano Masiero (Independent Consultants, Italy)

Ivano Masiero and Marco Dussin are two bearded independent IT engineers with over ten years' experience as scientific collaborators at the University of Padua. They are currently facing the Italian market field as strategic IT consultants. Their projects are mainly related to the design and development of large-scale back and front-end web infrastructures, with a particular focus on multi-user applications within a service orientated architecture. As strategic consultants, they support teams and organizations on the optimization of the process governance using an agile approach and practical techniques and tools such as Scrum and kanban. During the last years they've been organizing and managing training sessions for groups of students and knowledge workers both in the academic environment and for enterprise companies. Their workshops are mainly focused on agile methodologies, lean for knowledge workers, time management, design thinking. Lecture
  • Agile for knowledge workers: practical hints

Dr. Ingo Frommholz (University of Bedfordshire, United Kingdom)

Dr. Ingo Frommholz is a senior lecturer in Computer Science at the School of Computer Science and Technology of the University of Bedfordshire in Luton, UK. Prior to this he worked as a research associate at the University of Glasgow, the University of Duisburg-Essen and the Fraunhofer Integrated Publications and Information Systems Institute (IPSI), where he contributed to a number of European and national German and British projects in Information Retrieval, Digital Libraries and Digital Humanities. He gained further experience as software developer in various companies in Germany and as consultant in the UK. Ingo received his PhD in 2008 at the University of Duisburg-Essen on the topic of probabilistic logic-based information retrieval models. His current research mainly focuses on probabilistic inference and quantum-based geometrical models for interactive information access. Ingo is Managing Editor of the International Journal on Digital Libraries and member of the steering committees of the BCS and the German Information Retrieval Study Groups. He is Bedfordshire’s PI of the EU-H2020 ITN QUARTZ. He has been PC and senior PC member of several prestigious conferences and journals. Lecture
  • Polyrepresentation in a Quantum-inspired Information Retrieval Framework

Dr. Haiming Liu (University of Bedfordshire, United Kingdom)

Dr Haiming Liu is a senior lecturer in Computer Science and Technology at University of Bedfordshire (UoB) in the UK, where she undertakes research and teaching of both undergraduate and postgraduate level. Prior to joining UoB, she was a lecturer in Computing at the School of Computing, Engineering and Physical Sciences of University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), UK. She had also worked on a project called SocialLearn at The Open University, UK, where she was responsible to strive a good user experience for a social media platform tuned for learning in both academic and workplace contexts. Haiming completed her PhD at the Knowledge Media Institute (KMi), The Open University (UK) in 2010. Her research interests include interactive multimedia information retrieval, Human-centred information access, user interaction design, theory-based user modelling, learning analytics. Lecture
  • User Interaction and Modelling in Multimedia IR

Prof. Massimo Melucci (University of Padova, Italy)

Massimo Melucci is associate professor in Computer Science at the University of Padua, Italy. He lectured in Information Retrieval in university programmes, schools and seminars. He authored a book on Contextual Search (Now Publisher, 2012) and an Introduction to Information Retrieval and Quantum Mechanics (Springer, 2015). Lecture
  • Introduction to Information Access and Retrieval
  • Introduction to Information Retrieval and Quantum Mechanics

Dr. Massimiliano Sassoli de Bianchi (Brussels Free University, Belgium)

Massimiliano Sassoli de Bianchi graduated in physics from the University of Lausanne (UNIL), Switzerland, in 1989. From 1990 to 1991, he was an Assistant in the Department of Theoretical Physics (DPT) of the University of Geneva (UNIGE). In 1992, he joined the Institute of Theoretical Physics (IPT) at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), as a Ph.D. candidate. He received the Ph.D. degree in physics from EPFL in 1995. Since 1996, he has been working in the private sector and as an independent researcher. In 2016, he joined the Leo Apostel Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies (CLEA), at the Brussels Free University, as a research fellow. He has written essays, popular science books, children's stories, and has published more than 60 research articles. His research activities are focused on the foundations of physical theories, quantum mechanics, consciousness studies and quantum cognition. He is also the director of the Laboratorio di Autoricerca di Base (LAB), in Switzerland, and editor of its journal AutoRicerca. Lecture
  • From Cognition to Computer Science II: A Quantum Model of the World Wide Web

Prof. Ingo Schmitt (Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg, Germany)

Prof. Ingo Schmitt has main research interest in multimedia databases and information retrieval including query language and optimization, relevance weighting in requests, relevance feedback in image search, visualization of query results. He is also interested in high-dimensional index structures for efficient Nearest-Neighbor search and approximation techniques. His research aims to study how to efficiently and effectively store, index, retrieve the multimedia contents through optimization and approximation approaches. Lecture
  • Quantum Logic

Dr. Sandro Sozzo (University of Leicester, United Kingdom)

Sandro Sozzo is associate professor at the University of Leicester. His research interests are highly interdisciplinary and mainly concern the interface of natural and social sciences. He has provided substantial and pioneering contributions in the development of novel mathematical models in cognition and decision-making under uncertainty, with relevant applications in behavioural economics and computer science. Sandro Sozzo authored more than 80 publications, organized international conferences, coordinated special issues, and was invited to give keynote lectures in the UK (notably at the University of Oxford), EU, US, Canada, China and NZ. He is the secretary of the "International Quantum Structures Association" and the managing editor of the Springer Nature journal "Foundations of Science". In 2014, Sandro Sozzo founded the "Research Centre for Quantum Social and Cognitive Science" (IQSCS), and currently participates as partner in the research consortium "QUARTZ", which is funding a Marie Curie Innovative Training Network to the amount of €3.5M. He is a peer-review expert for the UK Leverhulme Trust Fund and the ESRC, the EU Cost Action, the US-Israel BSF, and the Italian Ministry of University & Research. At the School of Business, Sandro Sozzo acts as deputy director international and research and programme leader for the Finance Division. Lecture
  • From Cognition to Computer Science I: Quantum Models of Cognition

Marco Toffanin (University of Padova, Italy)

Multimedia communication expert, journalist and teacher, since a decade Marco Toffanin has been creating multimedia contents for scientific research, didactic and cultural information. Lecture
  • Research in video. Main guidelines to communicate scientific results with video

Dr. Giuseppe Vallone (University of Padova, Italy)

Giuseppe Vallone has a permanent position as Assistant Professor at the Department of Information Engineering (FIS/03) of the University of Padova from May 2011. He got his Ph.D. degree in Theoretical Physics at the University of Torino in January 2006 with a thesis on String Theory. He worked from 2006 to 2011 in the Quantum Optics Group of the Sapienza University of Rome. His research is focused on quantum information, generation and applications of photonic states, quantum computation, quantum communication, quantum random number generators, generation and application of Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM). In the years 2013-15 he was the Coordinator of a two-year project on the exploitation of OAM for quantum information applications funded by the University of Padova. He has more than 90 publications including 70 publications in international journals in the area of quantum optics and quantum information (Researcher ID: H-7579-2012, Google Scholar ID: link). Lecture
  • Introduction to Quantum Information and its applications

Prof. Zheng (Joyce) Wang (The Ohio State University, United States)

Zheng Joyce Wang (Ph.D., Indiana University-Bloomington, 2007) is a Professor in the School of Communication, Translational Data Analytics Institute, and the Center for Cognitive and Brain Sciences at the Ohio State University. She directs the Communication and Psychophysiology laboratory. One of her research interests is the use of real time and longitudinal data (e.g., psychophysiological, longitudinal life experience sampling) in conjunction with formal dynamic models to study information processing and choice behaviors. Another research interest of hers is to understand contextual influences on decision, cognition, and communication by building new probabilistic and dynamic systems based upon quantum rather than traditional classical probability theory. She publishes in journals in communication and cross disciplines, such as Journal of Communication, Cognition, and PNAS, and has won many best paper awards. She co-edited the Oxford Handbook of Computational and Mathematical Psychology (2015) and co-authored a new book, Cognitive Choice Modeling (MIT Press, forthcoming). Her research has been continuously supported by U.S. National Science Foundation and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Lecture
  • Empirical Foundations of Quantum Cognition
 

Lectures

  • Introduction to Information Access and Retrieval, Prof. Massimo Melucci
  • User Interaction and Modelling in Multimedia IR, Dr. Haiming Liu
  • Natural Language Processing and Computational Linguistics, Dr. Toine Bogers
  • Introduction to Machine Learning, Dr. Roi Blanco
  • Design and Evaluation of Machine Learning based Information Retrieval Systems, Dr. Emanuele Di Buccio
  • Introduction to Quantum Information and its applications, Dr. Giuseppe Vallone
  • Theoretical foundations of quantum cognition, Prof. Jerome Busemeyer
  • Empirical Foundations of Quantum Cognition, Prof. Zheng (Joyce) Wang
  • Quantum Logic, Prof. Ingo Schmitt
  • Introduction to Information Retrieval and Quantum Mechanics, Prof. Massimo Melucci
  • Polyrepresentation in a Quantum-inspired Information Retrieval Framework, Dr. Ingo Frommholz
  • From Cognition to Computer Science I: Quantum Models of Cognition, Dr. Sandro Sozzo
  • From Cognition to Computer Science II: A Quantum Model of the World Wide Web, Dr. Massimiliano Sassoli de Bianchi
  • Research in video. Main guidelines to communicate scientific results with video, Marco Toffanin
  • Agile for knowledge workers: practical hints, Ivano Masiero and Marco Dussin
 

Program

Available in the QUARTZ Winter School Program page.

 

Venue

The Winter School will be held at the Department of Information Engineering (DEI) of the University of Padova, via G. Gradenigo 6/b 35131 Padova, Italy.

A list of suggestions for accommodation is available at http://www.unipd.it/en/housing (see section Temporary accommodation - Hotels, B&B, hostels).

 

Organization

Organized by QUARTZ ITN, European Training Network (ETN) funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 721321.

Chair: Emanuele Di Buccio (Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova)