FATE Group

How can we balance the inherent bias found in search engines and achieve a sense of fair representation while effectively maintaining a high degree of utility?  We are a research group dedicated to studying and addressing bias in search and recommendation systems and increase fairness. 

So far, we have explored several ranking strategies to investigate the relationship between utility and fairness within Google search. We have developed a new framework that allows one to estimate the costs and possibilities of achieving certain level of fairness in a system, while keeping the users satisfied to some minimum limit.

InfoSeeking Lab is situated in  Information School at  University of Washington. The lab is directed by  Dr. Chirag Shah, and includes several PhD, Masters, and undergraduate students. The funding for the lab, more than 4 million dollars so far, has come from federal agencies such as NSF, IMLS, NIH, and Smithsonian Institution, as well as private organizations such as OCLC, Amazon, Google, and Yahoo.

The lab engages in research and education activities in the larger fields of Information and Data sciences, with a focus on information seeking/retrieval/behavior and social media.