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H2020Doctoral network2017–2020

QUARTZ · Quantum Information Access and Retrieval Theory

Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration
2017-01-01 → 2020-12-31
EU contribution
€3,461,495
Participants
13
Scheme
MSCA-ITN-ETN

Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.

Results in brief

Quantum Information Access and Retrieval Theory

All of us are users of Information Access and Retrieval (IAR) systems such as Web search engines. The peculiar difficulty of IAR is the fact that relevance cannot be precisely and exhaustively described by the data itself. Quantum Mechanics (QM) shares with IAR the intrinsic and unavoidable uncertainty of measurement. As a quantum mechanical system such as particle cannot be fully known through measurement because of incompatibility between observables, the user’s relevance of an information object to his/her information need cannot be fully known through keywords, clicks, or views because of incompatibility between context and data. The quantum mechanical framework aims, at a more foundational level, to study corpuses of documents in order to identify their underlying quantum structures. This will not only enable to better understand optimal mathematical structures to model semantic spaces, thus consistently and efficiently capturing the more abstract level of meaning conveyed by the documents and texts of human language, but also to use quantum structures to enhance the effectiveness of the different models in IAR applications. QUARTZ started from the idea of transferring the scientific research results and expertise from senior researchers in the utilisation of the theory of QM in IAR to the junior researchers, thus stimulating the birth and growth of a networked European community of scholars with a larger, stronger, and deeper expertise in IAR. Thanks to previous research work started from van Rijsbergen’s seminal book and recently culminated with another book by the coordinator, QUARTZ is based on the main pillars of the quantum mechanical framework to build a new approach to IAR. The senior researchers involved in this project as organisation leaders or independent advisory committee members are leading researchers in multidisciplinary fields of QM and IAR.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

Quantum Information Access and Retrieval TheoryWe aim to establish an European Training Network (ETN) on QUantum information Access and Retrieval Theory (QUARTZ). Towards a new approach to Information Access and Retrieval (IAR) addressing the challenges of the dynamic and multimodal nature of the data and user interaction context, QUARTZ aims to educate its Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) to adopt a novel theoretically and empirically motivated approach to IAR based on the quantum mechanical framework that gives up the notions of unimodal features and classical ranking models disconnected from context. Each ESR will be aware that the current state of the art of IAR is not sufficient to address the challenges of a dynamic, adaptive and context-aware user-machine interaction and to make a major breakthrough in the overall effectiveness of retrieval systems, and that a genuine theoretical breakthrough is on the contrary necessary. We believe that this breakthrough can be provided by quantum theory which can integrate abstract vector spaces, probability spaces and logic in a single theoretical framework which extend and generalize the classical vector, probability and logic spaces utilised in IAR. QUARTZ will consist of training activities and ESR research projects which investigate theoretical issues and evaluate methods and prototypes for adaptive IAR systems managing large data collections and meeting the end user's information needs in a dynamic context.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

  • UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI PADOVA · PadovaCoordinatorItaly
  • BRANDENBURGISCHE TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITAT COTTBUS-SENFTENBERG · CottbusGermany
  • GREATER GLASGOW HEALTH BOARD · GlasgowUnited Kingdom
  • KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET · KOBENHAVNDenmark
  • LINNEUNIVERSITETET · VaxjoSweden
  • QUEENSLAND UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY - QLD QUT · BrisbaneAustralia
  • SEMION LTD · LondonUnited Kingdom
  • STIFTUNG PREUSSISCHER KULTURBESITZ · BerlinGermany
  • THE OPEN UNIVERSITY · Milton KeynesUnited Kingdom
  • Tianjin University · TianjinChina
  • UNIVERSITY OF BEDFORDSHIRE · LutonUnited Kingdom
  • VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT BRUSSEL · Bruxelles / BrusselBelgium
  • WEBSAYS SL · BARCELONASpain

Links

Data: CORDIS, © European Union