Susan Dumais is a Technical Fellow at Microsoft, Director of the Microsoft Research Labs in Cambridge MA, New York City NY and Montréal QC, and an adjunct professor at the University of Washington. Prior to joining Microsoft, she was at Bell Labs where she developed Latent Semantic Analysis, an early word embedding technique for search. Her current research focuses on large-scale language modeling and behavioral log analysis, personalization, and email search. Susan has published widely in the fields of information retrieval, human-computer interaction, and cognitive science. She has worked with several Microsoft product groups from Bing, Windows, SharePoint, and Office on search-related innovations. She is an ACM Fellow, was elected to the CHI Academy, the SIGIR Academy, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), and received the SIGIR Gerard Salton Award for lifetime achievement in information retrieval, the ACM Athena Lecturer Award for fundamental contributions to computer science, the Tony Kent Strix Award for outstanding contributions to information retrieval, the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Research Award for lifetime achievement in human-computer interaction, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from Indiana University Department of Psychological and Brain Science.

Chirag Shah is Professor of Information and Computer Science at University of Washington (UW) in Seattle. He is the Founding Director for InfoSeeking Lab and Founding Co-Director of Center for Responsibility in AI Systems & Experiences (RAISE). He works in the area of intelligent information access systems, focusing on task-oriented search, proactive recommendations, and conversational systems. He is also engaged in work with generative AI, specifically in information access and image classification problems. In addition to creating AI-driven information access systems that provide more personalized reactive and proactive recommendations, he is also focusing on making such systems transparent, fair, and free of biases.

Shah is a Distinguished Member of Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) as well as Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T). He is the recipient of the 2019 Microsoft BCS/IRSG Karen Spärck Jones Award. He has published nearly 200 peer-reviewed articles and authored seven books, including text books on data science and machine learning. He also works closely with industrial research labs on cutting-edge problems, typically as a visiting researcher. The most recent engagements included Spotify (2018), Amazon (2019), MSR AI (2020), Getty Images (2021), and Microsoft Research (2023).

Daniel is a Chief Investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society’s Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Node and a Professor of Digital Communication in the School of Communication at QUT. His research focuses on the development of computational analysis methods for communication data, with a specific focus on interaction data. His novel computational methods have improved our understanding of the nature of communication in medical consultations, conversations in aged care settings, television broadcast, social media, and newspaper reporting. Daniel presently leads the Computational Communication and Culture program within the QUT Digital Media Research Centre, and contributes regularly to media and industry on the impact of
technology on society.

Peter Bailey leads Machine Learning for Search and Recommendations at Canva. He has worked in a range of organisations: from academia to industrial research labs, from startups to more than a decade at Microsoft. Peter has co-authored scientific papers, co-invented patents, and co-created widely used datasets, including WT10g, CERC, UQV100, and CRD3. While at Microsoft, Peter led the team that added personalised search ranking to Bing; applied research recognised by the ACM SIGIR 2022 Test of Time paper award. Peter was a member of Microsoft’s Responsible AI Fairness and Inclusiveness working group and is a Senior Member of the ACM.

Louisa is a final year PhD Candidate at Queensland University of Technology, specializing in trust and safety in digital technology. Her research focuses on responsible algorithmic recommendation on entertainment platforms in the context of online safety regulations. Louisa has expertise and academic background in political science and policy, including a BA from the University of Cambridge and an MSc from University College London. She has collaborated on projects exploring various topics, including inauthentic behavior and gendered harms online. Louisa’s work has informed policy discussions, including her involvement in shaping the Australian E-Safety Commissioner’s position statement on algorithmic recommender systems.

Lisa Given is Director of Social Change Enabling Capability Platform and Professor of Information Sciences at RMIT University. She is an interdisciplinary researcher, focusing on human information behavior and technology use across diverse settings and populations to catalyze social change. Lisa was the former President of the Association for Information Science and Technology. Her research has received funding from ARC, Canadian Institutes for Health Research, and Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Her latest book is the 5th edition of Looking for Information: A Survey of Research on Information Seeking.

Associate Professor Ramon Lobato is an Associate Investigator at the RMIT University node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making & Society (ADM+S). Ramon is also an Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the RMIT School of Media and Communication. A media industries researcher, he has a special interest in video distribution, and has written widely on piracy and informal media. Ramon’s books include Shadow Economies of Cinema, The Informal Media Economy (with Julian Thomas) and Netflix Nations. Ramon’s current research projects investigate the cultural impacts of subscription streaming services and smart TVs in Australia.

Dana has a longstanding interest in how people find, use and interact with information. The primary goals of her research are to make it easier for information seekers to find the best information for them at the time when they need it.

Dana has a long publication history in this field, but also considerable practical experience, having worked as a user experience expert in an academic library for ten years.

Alistair Moffat is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Melbourne. His research interests encompass text and index compression, source coding methods, web search, and information retrieval. Alistair has developed algorithms for large-scale text database compression and retrieval, and added to our knowledge of coding techniques including Huffman and arithmetic coding. His expertise also extends to web search, encompassing algorithms for indexing, ranking, and relevance modelling, and methods for evaluating web search techniques based on user models. With over 40 years of University teaching, he has influenced generations of Engineering and Science students. Alistair has authored three books and published hundreds of technical papers, and actively contributes to the discipline via committees and panels.   

Jason Potts is a Distinguished Professor of Economics at RMIT University, in the Blockchain Innovation Hub, and Chief Investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S). His research focuses on the economics of innovation and institutional dynamics associated with frontier technology. Jason and his team have pioneered the new field of institutional crypto-economics shedding light on the economic impacts of blockchain technology.

Prof Mark Sanderson is a Chief Investigator at the RMIT University node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making & Society (ADM+S). He is a Professor of Information Retrieval at RMIT University (RMIT), Director of the ISE Enabling Capability Platform at RMIT and head of the RMIT Information Retrieval (IR) group.

He has raised over $11 million dollars in grant income, published over 150 papers, and approximately 10,000 citations to his work.

His research is in the areas of search engines, recommender systems, user, data, and text analytics.

Julian Thomas is the Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, and a Distinguished Professor in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University. He has written widely about digital inclusion, automation and other topics relating to the social aspects of communications and computing technologies. His publications include the Sage Handbook to the Digital Media Economy (Sage 2022), Wi-Fi (Polity 2021), Measuring the Digital Divide: the Australian Digital Inclusion Index (Telstra, 2016-2021), Internet on the Outstation: The Digital Divide and Remote Aboriginal Communities (INC, 2016), and The Informal Media Economy (Polity, 2015).

Dr Paul Thomas is interested in information retrieval, particularly in how people use search systems and how we should evaluate search systems. Paul’s recent publications can be found here.

Johanne Trippas, a Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow at RMIT University, specializing in Intelligent Systems. Her research aims to enhance information accessibility through conversational systems, interactive information retrieval, and human-computer interaction. Additionally, Johanne is currently part of National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Text REtrieval Conference (TREC) program committee and is an ACM Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (CHIIR) steering committee member. She serves as vice-chair of SIGIR Artifact Evaluation Committee, tutorial chair for European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR) ’24, general chair for ACM Conversational User Interfaces (CUI) ’25, and proceedings chair for ACM SIGIR Conference on Information Retrieval in the Asia Pacific (SIGIR-AP) ’23.

Ariadna Matamoros-Fernandez, a Senior Lecturer in Digital Media at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), also serves as Chief Investigator at the Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC) and Associate Investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S). Her research focuses on the interplay between user practices and platform design and governance in (re)producing structural inequality. Her research has been published in renowned international peer-reviewed journals, including Information, Communication & Society, New Media & Society, and Feminist Media Studies. She is co-author of a forthcoming book on WhatsApp (Polity, with Amelia Johns and Emma Baulch).

Guido Zuccon is an Associate Professor at the University of Queensland, specializing in Information Retrieval. He leads the Information Engineering Lab (ielab), focusing on research in Medical/Health Information Retrieval and Data Science. Guido has published numerous peer-reviewed research articles and has received best paper awards. He serves as a reviewer for top journals and conferences in Information Retrieval. Additionally, Guido has also actively contributed to the academic community by providing scientific tutorials and participating in strategic workshops and evaluation efforts in Information Retrieval.