Speaker(s): Neil Lawrence (Amazon), Cathal Gurrin (Dublin City University) and Ansgar Koene (University of Nottingham)

Summary of the event:
The aim of the meeting is to discuss emerging issues around the ethics, transparency and biases of Information Retrieval and Analytics. Keynote speakers from Academia and Industry will provide insights on issues such as ethics, data governance, management/regulation of search systems, machine learning, algorithm transparency and data/system biases. This will be accompanied by discussions on the impacts on Information Retrieval and related areas, such as the gathering and sharing of data to model users and their context for personalisation and recommendation; the reuse of user data used to adapt/model search and recommendation; the biases and potential manipulation of search results and the societal impact of this; the explainability and transparency of search algorithms; and maintaining and preserving the privacy of users within search and recommendation.

Speaker Biographies:
The speakers are renowned experts in the field of information retrieval, data science and algorithmic bias.

Neil Lawrence is Director of Machine Learning at Amazon in Cambridge. His main research interest is machine learning through probabilistic models.

Ansgar Koene is Senior Research Fellow at The University of Nottingham. He is Co-Investigator on the UnBias project whose goal is to emancipate users against algorithmic biases for a trusted digital economy.

Cathal Gurrin is Associate Professor at Dublin City University. His work focuses on the generation and analysis of personal digital archives known as lifelogs.

David Stillwell is Deputy Director of The Psychometrics Centre at the University of Cambridge. He has pioneered work on the use of social media data for psychometric research, leading to the development of the myPersonality app that collected data from over 6 million people on Facebook.

Overview of Agenda:
08:30 - Registration
09:00 - Welcome and Introduction
09:00 - Keynote 1: Neil Lawrence (Amazon)
09:45 - Keynote 2: Cathal Gurrin (DCU)
10:30 - Coffee (+Posters if we include them)
11:00 - Industry Perspectives (Short talks)
11:45 - Keynote 3: Ansgar Koene (University of Nottingham)
12:30 - Lunch
14:00 - Keynote 4: David Stillwell
14:45 - Academic Perspectives (Short talks)
16:00 - Tea (+Posters if we include them)
16:15 - Panel Session and discussion
17:00 - Close

Will catering be provided?
Refreshments will be provided on arrival and during the breaks, as well as lunch.

About the organiser:
The BCS Information Retrieval SG organises this event; find out more about the group at http://irsg.bcs.org/.

Refund Policy:
A full refund will be issued if a cancellation is received within 14 days of the booking date or by 12:00 pm on Friday 31st August 2018, otherwise, name substitutions will be allowed after this date.

For overseas delegates who wish to attend the event please note that BCS does not issue invitation letters.