University to open centre for search research

The University of California at Berkeley is creating an interdisciplinary centre for advanced search technologies and is in talks with search giants including Google to join the project, CNET News.com has learned.

The project is one of many efforts at US universities designed to address the explosive growth of internet search and the complex issues that have arisen in the field.

UC Berkeley, birthplace of early search highflier Inktomi and the school where Google CEO Eric Schmidt got his computer science doctoral degree, is bringing together roughly 20 faculty members from various departments to cross-pollinate work on search technology, said Robert Wilensky, the centre's director. The principal areas of focus are: privacy, fraud, multimedia search and personalisation.

Wilensky said in an interview: "We want to solve the problems that have been engendered by the success of search." Wilensky is a professor of computer science and information management at Berkeley.

Plans are still being worked out for the centre's physical space but Wilensky said he hopes designs will be completed within the next few months and the centre will be opened early next year. He also said he's talking to Google and other search players about membership.

"If you have 20 researchers interested in search, then getting them together where they are cross-fertilising ideas, you make something bigger than its parts. You can create a nuclear reaction," he said.

Google declined to comment.

One major area of development at Berkeley will be in trust and privacy. For example, how believable is the content dug up on Google or how do you know an eBay seller is truly trustworthy?

Wilensky said his group has proved that on average, eBay seller ratings are skewed based on what's called retaliatory ratings in which people slam those who slam them. Others with black marks will disappear only to re-emerge later with a clean slate. As a result, Wilensky said, his team has built an algorithm called "EM trust" (for expectation maximisation) using a statistical model for rating how honest an online seller may or may not be. That development might be applied to websites as well.

The centre will be modeled after Berkeley's Wireless Research Center in downtown Berkeley, which enjoys the backing of big mobile companies. It will include such faculty as Jitendra Malik, professor and chair of UC Berkeley's Department of Electrical Engineering, and David Forsyth, professor of computer sciences, who are both working on computer-vision research.

Stefanie Olsen writes for CNET News.com