Overview
Background
I am currently a lecturer at the University of Queensland, where I conduct research in the field of Information Retrieval. My research focuses on efficient and effective representations for large-scale search engines, including indexing, compression, and retrieval. I am also interested in understanding how to measure improvements in the end-to-end search pipeline, including system-oriented effectiveness measurements and user behaviour analysis. I have a broad interest in empirical experimentation, operating systems, data structures, and algorithms.
Previous Positions
- From February 2020 to January 2022 I worked as a postdoctoral research fellow on an ARC discovery project with Professor Alistair Moffat at the University of Melbourne.
- I completed my PhD at RMIT University under the guidance of Professor J. Shane Culpepper and Professor Falk Scholer.
Availability
- Dr Joel Mackenzie is:
- Available for supervision
- Media expert
Fields of research
Research interests
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Efficient Data Structures and Algorithms
Inverted Indexes, Compression, Query Processing, Distributed Search, Parallel Processing, Data structures, Algorithms
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Evaluating Search Systems
Empirical Experimentation, Metrics, Data Visualization, User Behaviour
Works
Search Professor Joel Mackenzie’s works on UQ eSpace
2019
Conference Publication
Accelerated query processing via similarity score prediction
Petri, Matthias, Moffat, Alistair, Mackenzie, Joel, Culpepper, J. Shane and Beck, Daniel (2019). Accelerated query processing via similarity score prediction. 42nd Annual International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval (SIGIR), Paris, France, 21-25 July 2019. New York, NY United States: Association for Computing Machinery. doi: 10.1145/3331184.3331207
2019
Conference Publication
Exploring User Behavior in Email Re-Finding Tasks
Mackenzie, Joel, Gupta, Kshitiz, Qiao, Fang, Awadallah, Ahmed Hassan and Shokouhi, Milad (2019). Exploring User Behavior in Email Re-Finding Tasks. World Wide Web Conference (WWW), San Francisco, CA United States, 13-17 May 2019. New York, NY United States: Association for Computing Machinery. doi: 10.1145/3308558.3313450
2019
Conference Publication
Compressing inverted indexes with recursive graph bisection: A reproducibility study
Mackenzie, Joel, Mallia, Antonio, Petri, Matthias, Culpepper, J. Shane and Suel, Torsten (2019). Compressing inverted indexes with recursive graph bisection: A reproducibility study. 41st European Conference on IR Research, ECIR 2019, Cologne, Germany, 14-18 April 2019. Heidelberg, Germany: Springer. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-15712-8_22
2019
Conference Publication
PISA: Performant indexes and search for academia
Mallia, Antonio, Siedlaczek, Michał, MacKenzie, Joel and Suel, Torsten (2019). PISA: Performant indexes and search for academia. Open-Source IR Replicability Challenge (OSIRRC 2019), Paris, France, 25 July 2019. Aachen, Germany: RWTH Aachen University.
2018
Conference Publication
Revisiting spam filtering in web search
Gallagher, Luke, Mackenzie, Joel and Culpepper, J. Shane (2018). Revisiting spam filtering in web search. 23rd Australasian Document Computing Symposium (ADCS), Dunedin, New Zealand, 11-12 December 2018. New York, NY United States: Association for Computing Machinery. doi: 10.1145/3291992.3291999
2018
Conference Publication
On the cost of negation for dynamic pruning
Mackenzie, Joel, Macdonald, Craig, Scholer, Falk and Culpepper, J. Shane (2018). On the cost of negation for dynamic pruning. 40th European Conference on Information Retrieval Research (ECIR), Grenoble, France, 26-29 March 2018. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-76941-7_42
2018
Conference Publication
Query driven algorithm selection in early stage retrieval
Mackenzie, Joel, Culpepper, J. Shane, Blanco, Roi, Crane, Matt, Clarke, Charles L. A. and Lin, Jimmy (2018). Query driven algorithm selection in early stage retrieval. 11th ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining, Marina Del Rey, CA United States, 5-9 February 2018. New York, NY United States: Association for Computing Machinery. doi: 10.1145/3159652.3159676
2018
Conference Publication
RMIT at the 2018 TREC CORE Track
Benham, Rodger, Liu, Binsheng, Gallagher, Luke, Lu, Xiaolu, Mackenzie, Joel, Scholer, Falk, Moffat, Alistair and Culpepper, J. Shane (2018). RMIT at the 2018 TREC CORE Track. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
2018
Conference Publication
Towards efficient and effective query variant generation
Benham, Rodger, Culpepper, J. Shane, Gallagher, Luke, Lu, Xiaolu and Mackenzie, Joel (2018). Towards efficient and effective query variant generation. First Biennial Conference on Design of Experimental Search & Information Retrieval Systems (DESIRES 2018), Bertinoro, Italy, 28-31 August 2018. Aachen, Germany: RWTH Aachen University.
2017
Conference Publication
Early termination heuristics for score-at-a-time index traversal
Mackenzie, Joel, Scholer, Falk and Culpepper, J. Shane (2017). Early termination heuristics for score-at-a-time index traversal. ADCS 2017: The 22nd Australasian Document Computing Symposium, Brisbane, QLD Australia, 7-8 December 2017. New York, NY United States: Association for Computing Machinery. doi: 10.1145/3166072.3166073
2017
Conference Publication
A comparison of document-at-a-time and score-at-a-time query evaluation
Crane, Matt, Culpepper, J. Shane, Lin, Jimmy, Mackenzie, Joel and Trotman, Andrew (2017). A comparison of document-at-a-time and score-at-a-time query evaluation. 10th ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM), Cambridge, United Kingdom, 6-10 February 2017. New York, NY United States: Association for Computing Machinery. doi: 10.1145/3018661.3018726
2017
Conference Publication
Managing Tail Latencies in Large Scale IR Systems
Mackenzie, Joel (2017). Managing Tail Latencies in Large Scale IR Systems. 40th International ACM SIGIR conference on research and development in Information Retrieval, Shinjuku, Japan, 7-11 August 2017. New York, NY United States: Association for Computing Machinery. doi: 10.1145/3077136.3084152
2016
Conference Publication
RMIT at the TREC 2016 LiveQA Track
Mackenzie, Joel, Chen, Ruey-Cheng and Culpepper, J. Shane (2016). RMIT at the TREC 2016 LiveQA Track. 25th Text REtrieval Conference, TREC 2016, Gaithersburg, MD United States, 15 November 2016. Gaithersburg, MD United States: National Institute of Standards and Technology.
2015
Conference Publication
Efficient location-aware web search
Mackenzie, Joel, Choudhury, Farhana M. and Culpepper, J. Shane (2015). Efficient location-aware web search. ADCS '15: The 20th Australasian Document Computing Symposium, Parramatta, NSW Australia, 8-9 December 2015. New York, NY United States: Association for Computing Machinery. doi: 10.1145/2838931.2838933
Funding
Current funding
Supervision
Availability
- Dr Joel Mackenzie is:
- Available for supervision
Before you email them, read our advice on how to contact a supervisor.
Supervision history
Current supervision
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Doctor Philosophy
Efficient Next-Generation Information Retrieval Systems
Principal Advisor
Other advisors: Professor Shane Culpepper
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Doctor Philosophy
Human-centered verification of language model outputs
Associate Advisor
Other advisors: Professor Guido Zuccon, Professor Tim Miller
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Master Philosophy
Search and Recommendation using Large Language Models
Associate Advisor
Other advisors: Professor Shane Culpepper
Completed supervision
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2023
Doctor Philosophy
Teaching Pre-trained Language Models to Rank Effectively, Efficiently, and Robustly
Associate Advisor
Other advisors: Professor Guido Zuccon
Media
Enquiries
Contact Dr Joel Mackenzie directly for media enquiries about:
- Big Data
- Data Science
- Data Structures and Algorithms
- Information Retrieval
- Search Algorithms
- Search Engines
- Web Search
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