The programme has attracted leading Bulgarian scientists from various fields of information retrieval (search engine development technologies) and natural language processing methods. The Master Programme is implemented in cooperation with the European COST project: Action: IC1002: Multilingual and Multifaceted Interactive Information Access (MUMIA).
Focus, educational goals
Information Retrieval or Search Engine Technologies and Knowledge Discovery in Data / Text Mining have been a rapidly growing area over the last decade. A major prerequisite for this is the explosive development of the Web, digital libraries and other electronic storage of information and data. This raises the need to develop methods and algorithms to find useful information quickly and easily. At present, the unstructured information (text) presented electronically far exceeds the structured information (data). Systems for searching and retrieving useful information in the ocean from unstructured (semi-structured) information have a significantly larger market share at the present. At the same time, the need for automatic analysis of these large corpora of text and data to gain knowledge from them increases. Currently, this is one of the fastest-growing markets in the IT sector, which also determines the demand for specialists who are well acquainted with the relevant algorithms and software technologies.
The program is meant for students who have bachelor's degrees in the fields of Computer Science, Software Engineering and Mathematics.
The Master's programme aims to familiarize students with the basic information retrieval methods and algorithms that are trying to go further than keyword search by adding a degree of intelligence to the developed systems. Students will learn basic approaches to natural language processing and automatic data and text analysis. They will develop skills to solve specific tasks by successfully combining the necessary sequence of steps and assessing the role of the necessary resources and technologies for successful realizations.
The program attracts leading Bulgarian scientists in the fields of information retrieval (search engine development technologies), natural language processing, data discovery and other applications of artificial intelligence.
Training (knowledge and skills)
The program attracts leading Bulgarian scientists in the fields of information retrieval (search engine development technologies), natural language processing, data discovery and other applications of artificial intelligence.
TEACHING METHODS:
- The training in the disciplines in the program is carried out through lectures + practical exercises + discussions + individual assignments. The main knowledge is delivered to students during lectures. Students prepare their practical assignments.
- During the seminars students get acquainted with modern software tools and libraries used to solve problems on the topics of the courses, and consider sample tasks to understand and practice the studied algorithms and methods.
- The necessary training resources are the following: computer and multimedia presentation slides.
THE PROGRAM WILL PROVIDE THE STUDENTS WITH:
- Knowledge of basic algorithms and methods behind web-search engines, e-commerce sites, recommendation systems, email spam filtering, spell correction, machine translation, automatic classification and grouping, etc. Methods for designing and developing software systems and services.
- The skills gained from experience in developing course projects of real applications, such as text processing; creating search engines; smart tools to improve search accuracy; spam filtering systems, categorization and grouping of documents; approaches for automatic data analysis and text aim to detect in them implicitly presented dependencies and specimens.
- Open doors to job opportunities in information retrieval and e-commerce companies.
Professional competence
Graduates of the curriculum will acquire the following basic competencies:
- Knowledge and skills for implementing algorithms and methods needed to build search and retrieval systems from collections of text documents and web;
- Skills to apply natural language processing approaches and implement systems that help the user in analyzing and processing text;
- Skills to use methods needed to analyze large data sets and text for the purpose of discarding unknown knowledge about them;
- Knowledge and skills for use of software tools and technologies for development of software systems solving real tasks.
Professional realization
Graduates of the Master's program in Information Retrieval and Knowledge Discovery will be able to find realization as developers of systems for searching and analyzing texts; creators of platforms for processing and analysis of large data sets; as researchers and lecturers in academic institutions; as experts in extraction and analysis of information to government institutions and companies offering analytical services.
The program gives opportunities for graduates to continue their education in proper PhD degree programs as well.