Research

With the ever-increasing large amount of digital information available, the need for advanced Information Retrieval and Knowledge Management intelligent systems increases. This wealth of digital information presents a major data-analysis challenge for us. How to manipulate, analyze and understand large quantities of complex data becomes extremely important.

Our research lab is currently focused on the areas of big data analytics, information retrieval and its applications to Web and medical health care. Information retrieval research involves techniques from machine learning and other theoretical models, together with extensive experimentation to develop more accurate, fast and advanced information retrieval and search techniques for a variety of applications.

Selected Research Projects

• Searching and Analyzing Big Data: Context-sensitive and Task-aware Approaches (funded by NSERC Individual Discovery Grant, 2015-2020)
• Computational Approaches for Advanced Disaster, Emergency and Rapid Response Simulation (ADERSIM) (funded by NSERC Collaborative Research & Training Experience Program (CREATE) Program, 2015-2021)
• Big Data Research, Analytics and Information Network (BRAIN) Alliance (funded by Ontario Ministry of Research & Innovation Research Fund - Research Excellence (ORF-RE) Grant, 2015-2020)
• Building Bridges across Social and Computational Sciences: Using Big Data to Inform Humanitarian Policy and Interventions (funded by SSHRC Partnership Development Grant, 2015-2017)
• Advanced Disaster Emergency, Rapid Response Simulation (ADERSIM) (funded by Ontario Research Fund (ORF) - Large Infrastructure Grant, 2015-2020)
• An Online Integrated Health Risk Assessment Tool (funded by Collaborative R&D, 2014-2019)
• Enterprise Software for Data Analytics (funded by Collaborative R&D, 2014-2019)
• Development of Predictive Analytics and Business Intelligence Tools for Improved Patient Management Using Intelligent Decision Support Systems (funded by Collaborative R&D, 2013-2016)
• Context-Sensitive and Task-Oriented Adaptive Information Retrieval (funded by NSERC Individual Discovery Grant, 2007-2015)
• Analyzing and Searching Medical Data for Cost Effective Health Care (funded by Ontario Ministry of Research Innovation Early Research Award, 2007-2012)
• Context-Sensitive and Semantic Information Retrieval in Health Care: Search beyond Traditional Engines (funded by Ontario Ministry of Research Innovation and York University, 2009-2012)
• Computational Support for Data Mining and Adaptive Information Extraction for Applications in Health (funded by NSERC RTI Grant, 2010-2011)
• Finding Best Evidence for Evidence-based Best Practice Recommendations in Health Care (funded by Collaborative R&D Grant, 2007-2010)
• Context-Aware Information Retrieval and Semantic Text Analysis for Very Large Unstructured Data (funded by NSERC RTI Grant, 2008-2009)
• A Hybrid Framework for Discovering Biological Relationships from Large-scale Biomedical Text Documents (funded by Petro Canada Young Innovator Award, 2008-2009)
• Ultra-large Scale Software Systems with Applications on Healthcare (funded by IBM SUR Award, 2008-2009)
• What Do We Know? The Implications of Global Climate Change for Canadian Employment and Work: Regional Climate Change, Regulatory Challenges and Employment Transitions (funded by SSHRC, CIHR and NSERC Tri-Agency Grant, 2008- )
• Medical Text Analytics Tools for Search and Classification (funded by CIHR and ICES Collaboration Research Grant, 2007-2010)
• The Use and Future Use of Data Mining in the Practice of Management Accounting (funded by CGA-Canada and CAAA Research Grant, 2008-2009)
• Personalizing Web Search Using Data Mining Techniques (funded by NSERC Individual Discovery Grant, 2004-2007)