Dr Leif Azzopardi

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Computer and Information Sciences

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Personal statement

I am an Associate Professor in Artifical Intelligence and Data Science within the Departement of Computer and Information Sciences at the University of Strathclyde, where I lead the Interaction Lab (i-lab). My group specializes on developing, evaluating and modelling information rich and information intensive applications and agents -- and thus we develop novel Recommender Systems and Information Retrieval Systems underpinned by Natural Language Processing, Language Modelling, Machine Learning and Deep Learning.

Given such technology, my group focuses on understanding and modelling how information systems shape and influence people and society. Thus, at the heart of our research is the focus on modelling and predicting the interaction between people and systems. Current and recent research projects include:

  • 4 Year EU funded project on Domain Specific Search and Information Extraction and Retrieval (DoSSIER) for Information Professionals, with projects inc:
  • Building economic models of information-interactions
  • Modelling and measuring the cognitive costs of interaction
  • Developing exploratory search interfaces for professional search
  • Deep neural models for contextual search
  • 3 Year EPSRC funded project on Cumulative Revelations of Personal Data
  • 4 Year EPSRC iCase project with BAE on Optimising Information Intensive Interfaces in High Pressured Situations
  • 4 year industry project with Thales on Agent Reliability on Trust and Performance in Human-Agent Collaboration
  • 4 year project on Analyzing the relationship between Bias and Performance in neural and language models2.5 year Knowledge Exchange Project with BIP Solutions on applying machine learning to procurement search
  • Modelling and measuring search engine result pages with economic theory (in collaboration with Microsoft)
  • Developing and evaluating interactive conversational search agentd (with Capita)
  • Developing continous active learning agents for systematic search

In addition to teaching Deep Learning, I also teach Startup Engineering, where I have written Tango with Django, which is a beginner's guide to web application development using Python and the Django web application framework.

 

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Publications

Data-driven evaluation metrics for heterogeneous search engine result pages
Azzopardi Leif, White Ryen W, Thomas Paul, Craswell Nick
CHIIR 2020 - Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval CHIIR 2020 - Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval, pp. 213–222 (2020)
https://doi.org/10.1145/3343413.3377959
Measuring the utility of search engine result pages : an information foraging based measure
Azzopardi Leif, Thomas Paul, Craswell Nick
41st International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, pp. 605-614 (2018)
https://doi.org/10.1145/3209978.3210027
Modelling interaction with economic models of search
Azzopardi Leif
SIGIR '14 Proceedings of the 37th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research & Development in Information Retrieval , pp. 3-12 (2014)
https://doi.org/10.1145/2600428.2609574
From query to conscience : the importance of information retrieval in empowering socially responsible consumerism
van der Sluis Frans, Azzopardi Leif, Meier Florian
SIGIR '25: Proceedings of the 48th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval The 48th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, pp. 3853-3864 (2025)
https://doi.org/10.1145/3726302.3730347
Conversational gold : evaluating personalized conversational search system using gold nuggets
Abbasiantaeb Zahra, Lupart Simon, Azzopardi Leif, Dalton Jeffrey, Aliannejadi Mohammad
SIGIR '25: Proceedings of the 48th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval The 48th International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, pp. 3455-3465 (2025)
https://doi.org/10.1145/3726302.3730316
Assessing risks in online information sharing
Azzopardi Leif, Nicol Emma, Briggs Jo, Moncur Wendy, Schafer Burkhard, Nash Callum, duheric melissa
CHIIR 2025 - Proceedings of the 2025 ACM SIGIR Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval 2025 ACM SIGIR Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval CHIIR 2025 - Proceedings of the 2025 ACM SIGIR Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval, pp. 71-80 (2025)
https://doi.org/10.1145/3698204.3716447

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Professional Activities

Engage with Strathclyde: Joining the Dots: Personal Data Security of FinTech Employees
Speaker
25/5/2021

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Projects

Participatory Harm Auditing Workbenches and Methodologies (PHAWM)
Moshfeghi, Yashar (Principal Investigator) Azzopardi, Leif (Co-investigator) Ruthven, Ian (Co-investigator)
01-Jan-2024 - 31-Jan-2028
Using Chatbot Technology To Assure Quality Knowledge Capture From Space
Vasile, Massimiliano (Principal Investigator) Azzopardi, Leif (Co-investigator) Minisci, Edmondo (Co-investigator) Moshfeghi, Yashar (Co-investigator)
01-Jan-2020 - 31-Jan-2024
DoSSIER: Domain Specific Systems for Information, Extraction and Retrieval (H2020 MSCA)
Azzopardi, Leif (Principal Investigator) Halvey, Martin (Co-investigator) Ruthven, Ian (Co-investigator)
01-Jan-2019 - 31-Jan-2023
Cumulative Revelations in Personal Data
Azzopardi, Leif (Principal Investigator)
01-Jan-2019 - 30-Jan-2022
KTP - BiP Solutions Ltd
Azzopardi, Leif (Principal Investigator) Moshfeghi, Yashar (Co-investigator)
30-Jan-2018 - 29-Jan-2021
BiP Tracker - Search and Recommendation
Moshfeghi, Yashar (Principal Investigator) Azzopardi, Leif (Co-investigator)
05-Jan-2018 - 07-Jan-2018

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Contact

Dr Leif Azzopardi
Reader
Computer and Information Sciences

Email: leif.azzopardi@strath.ac.uk
Tel: 548 3617