Google grant to UNT assistant professor supports research in info retrieval
By UNT
Nov 10, 2005
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DENTON (UNT), Texas -- Imagine typing a word like "language" into an Internet search engine, and within seconds, retrieving the relevant information and, eventually, the page numbers as found in books physically stored in libraries throughout the world. Google Print, a division of Google, Inc., is currently building an online electronic database of this kind of information.

Rada Mihalcea, a University of North Texas assistant professor of computer science and engineering, has received a grant of $107,112 from Google to support her research in information retrieval through her research project titled "Finding Important Information in Unstructured Text: Algorithms for Keyphrase and Sentence Extraction." Mihalcea is working on automatic methods for extracting important information from books stored in electronic format. This could take the form of back-of-the-book indexes or succinct summaries, and could eventually lead to better ways of accessing the information in the books.

According to Google co-founder and president of products Larry Page, Google's work with libraries further enhances the existing Google Print program, which enables users to find matches within the full text of books.

To achieve this goal, Google is working with libraries at Harvard University, Stanford University, the University of Michigan, the University of Oxford and the New York Public Library to digitally scan books and provide databases with specific book content.

Mihalcea says she's excited to work on research that has the potential of changing the way people will access information.

An expert in natural language processing and information retrieval, Mihalcea's research project addresses the construction of indexes and summaries for very large documents.In a world where the amount of information is growing at a staggering pace, Mihalcea says her project could be instrumental.

For more information about Mihalcea' s research, contact her at (940) 369-7630 or send her an e-mail at rada@cs.unt.edu.