University of Amsterdam visit leads to future collaborations for ADM+S student
Author Natalie Campbell
Date 02 November 2023
An international visit to the University of Amsterdam has led to new opportunities for Yueqing Xuan beyond her PhD research.
Yueqing Xuan, a PhD student from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S) at RMIT University has returned from a research visit at the University of Amsterdam, working with Partner Investigator Prof Maarten De Rijke in the Information Retrieval (IR) Lab.
During the September program, Yueqing was able to develop connections with top researchers and PhD students in the IR field, opening doors for future collaborations that extend beyond her PhD research.
Yueqing now plans to develop a research proposal for a joint paper that she will collaborate on with colleagues Maria Heuss and Yuanna Liu from the University of Amsterdam, following discussions of similar interests in IR topics.
Yueqing’s thesis ‘Fairness-Aware and Privacy-Preserving Recommender System’, aims to propose a novel fairness-aware and privacy-preserving recommender system that is based on adversarial machine learning and attack/defence models.
Yueqing explained, “Maria provided me with some insights into the fairness issues she observed in her preliminary experiments, and we found out we could explore the existence of similar phenomena in recommender systems.
Similarly, Yuanna’s research also inspired me to investigate the potential impacts of over-simplification in experimental setups to bias in recommender systems.”
Impressed by the emphasis on industry collaboration within the IR Lab, Yueqing observed students being actively involved in research projects with industry partners.
“Some are co-supervised by industry people which allows their research to address real-world problems and challenges,” she said.
During the visit, Yueqing participated in various IR Lab activities, talks, reading groups and lunches, which facilitated collaboration and discussions.
A highlight was being given the opportunity to participate in a ‘Soos talk’, where members presented their work, publications, or ongoing projects, allowing students to improve their presentation skills and receive feedback.
“The open discussion not only had a profound impact on my academic research projects but also served as a constant source of motivation to strive for excellence in my research by refining my own research practices.
The University of Amsterdam is a Partner Organisation of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, fostering collaboration for ADM+S members in an international network.
This research visit was supported by ADM+S and the University of Amsterdam.
