BCS Search Industry Awards 2024
By Tony Russell-Rose (IRSG Events Coordinator and Informer co-Editor)
We are delighted to announce this year’s Search Industry Awards, celebrating the best search innovations of 2024. Presented by the Information Retrieval Specialist Group of the BCS, these awards recognize people, projects, and organisations around the world that have excelled in the design of search and information retrieval products and services.
If you know of any people, projects, or products that deserve recognition, let us know by submitting a nomination. Alternatively, if you’re involved with something special yourself, you can submit an application today.
Categories
This year we are offering four awards:
1. Best search project recognises the most impactful implementation of search technology or methodology in solving a specific problem or need. Previous winners include:
- Wikiframe Visual Graph, a search capability for Special Collections data stored on Wikidata (wikidata.org)
- CiteSeerX, one of the largest open source academic search engines with over 10 million documents
- LexisNexis for their work on Open question answering on Lexis+
2. Search professional of the year is made to an individual who has made a significant contribution through their work and professionalism. Previous winners include:
- Amey Porobo Dharwadker, Machine Learning Tech Lead Manager at Meta
- Adam Tocock, Library Assistant at NHS
- Stuart Mackie, Lead Data Scientist at BiP Solutions
3. Most promising start up (or new enterprise) recognises the innovative and disruptive potential of a business model, technology, or solution. Previous winners include:
- batteryincluded.ai, First BI Product Discovery Framework incl. 3 pillars for highest relevancy within global product listings
- Giotto AI, an all-in-one platform to automatize, digitalize, and standardize the data collection, analysis and writing of a Clinical Evaluation Report
- Resolute.AI, an AI driven platform to search major FDA databases in the public domain in a federated way
4. Best paper / presentation (at Search Solutions). Previous winners include:
- Charlie Hull, OSC: “Pragmatic AI-powered Search — Keeping it Simple, not Stupid”.
- Filip Radlinski, Google: “Challenges with Really Understanding Natural Language in Conversational Recommendation”
- Olivia Foulds, University of Strathclyde: “Crossing the 49th Parallel in Data and Information Science”
The last award is open only to presenters at Search Solutions, and will be judged on the day of the event. For all others, apply today!
Judging Panel
Winners will be selected by our panel of judges (details to be announced shortly).
Awards Ceremony
The awards ceremony will take place during Search Solutions 2024.
Apply
We’ve designed the application process to be simple to complete.
If you are unsure which category to apply for, or have questions about the application process, contact us via the address below. For further details, see: https://www.bcs.org/membership-and-registrations/member-communities/information-retrieval-specialist-group/awards/bcs-search-industry-awards/
Nominations will remain open until 31st October.
Contact
If you have any questions on the above, please contact the IRSG Events Organiser at tgr2uk+irsg@gmail.com
About IRSG
The IRSG is a Specialist Group of BCS. Its mission is to provide a focus for the European IR community, facilitate communication between researchers and practitioners and promote the adoption of IR research within industry. We host a major European conference (ECIR) and provide an associated programme of workshops, seminars and events. The IRSG is free to join via the BCS website, which provides access to further IR articles, events and resources.
BCS is the industry body for IT professionals. With members in over 100 countries around the world, BCS is the leading professional and learned society in the field of computers and information systems.
