Name: Prof. Maarten de Rijke

Education: MSc in Philosophy and Mathematics, PhD in Theoretical Computer Science

Position at UvA: Professor

"After obtaining MSc degrees in Philosophy and in Mathematics, I completed a PhD in Theoretical Computer Science, on knowledge representation formalisms. I have
worked at CWI, the University of Warwick, and the University of Amsterdam, with shorter and longer intermissions at universities and research labs abroad."

"Information retrieval is my greatest research interest. This is the science of search engines. How should we analyse documents, queries and user behaviour? How do we put
these analyses together to arrive at high quality retrieval results? And how do we measure the quality of these results?"

"The focus of the HCM track is a mixture of technology and users: that's exactly what we need to be able to come up with the next generation search engines. Students should be creative, willing to change the world and come without a
9-to-5 attitude but with a solid mix of programming, mathematics and design talent."