Engineering Professor Selected as Hypothes.is Fellow

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Susan Gauch, head of the department of computer science and computer engineering, has been selected to take part in the Hypothes.is Reputation Fellows Program. The Hypothes.is project is developing tools to improve the quality of information on the Internet, using the model of community peer-review. Currently, Hypothes.is developing a reputation model, a system that would allow Internet users to rate content and then use these ratings to produce a reputation score.

As a Hypothes.is fellow, Gauch will take part in a workshop on reputation modeling in San Francisco from Feb. 22-24, where the fellows will discuss the challenges of this project. After the workshop, one or more fellows will be invited to continue as funded collaborators with the Hypothes.is team.

Gauch is an expert in intelligent search who developed one of the first meta-search engines (ProFusion) and one of the first video search engines (VISION). She is a leading expert and well-published author on the use of ontologies in personalized search.  Her current research focuses on personalization in the CiteSeer^x project and searching in virtual worlds.

“I am interested in the Hypothes.is project because it takes my work on user modeling to the next level,” explained Gauch. “Not just ‘What is the user interested in?’ but also ‘How reliable is this user?’ and, by extension ‘How reliable is the information provided by this user?’”  

Gauch holds the Rodger S. Kline Leadership Chair in the College of Engineering.