Abstract

In this talk, Alexander will cover from different perspectives how search systems can respond to comparative questions, which was the main focus of his PhD studies. He will discuss approaches to identifying comparative questions and identifying important constituents of comparative questions, such as the options being compared. Then, Alexander will cover stance detection of answers towards these comparison options. Following that, he will discuss argument retrieval, which represents a specific case within the broader domain of information retrieval. In the final part, Alexander will provide a brief overview of his current project, which involves the development of a chatbot in the field of infectious diseases.

Bio:

Alexander is a postdoc at the Medical Faculty at Leipzig University. During his PhD at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Alexander worked on the topics concerning answering comparative questions with arguments. In particular, he focused on question understanding, argument retrieval, argument quality prediction, and stance detection. His current research focuses on a generative AI system in the domain of infectious diseases that is powered by information retrieval (RAG). Alexander regularly serves as a program committee member for different IR conferences such as CHIIR , ECIR, and CLEF . He was also a lead organizer of Touché, a series of scientific events, and shared tasks on computational argumentation and causality.