Proposal for support of student attendance and funding for Keynote Speakers. ECIR 2006: 28th European Conference on Information Retrieval

Information retrieval is an important area of IT which has had an increasing profile over the past few years with search engines such as Google becoming popular. Researchers in the U.K. were pioneers in the field, and the UK has continued to be strong in the area over the past 40 years or so. Many commercial companies have become successful in taking ideas produced in the academic world and successfully producing software that is sold on the open market. It is therefore important to ensure that the UK strength in information retrieval is maintained and enhanced, by supporting research student paper presentation and attendance at the top European Conference on Information Retrieval research. The conference, known as ECIR, will be held at Imperial College London in April 2006. The conference series has been running for 28 years, and has always had a focus on supporting research students and new researchers. We therefore propose funding for students to both present paper/posters and to attend the conference, and also to support keynote speakers attendance. This project will help the continuity of excellence in information retrieval research in the U.K. and ensure the vitality of the field in the country.