NYU Stern Professors Ghose and Ipeirotis Receive Microsoft Live Labs Search Award

Microsoft awarded NYU Stern Professors Anindya Ghose and Panagiotis Ipeirotis a Live Labs Search Award for their research proposal entitled, “Combining Econometric and Text Mining Approaches for Measuring the Effect of Online Information Exchange.”  Professors Ghose and Ipeirotis received one of the 12 specially funded awards, following a highly competitive selection process in which Microsoft chose their work from more than 180 submissions.  Microsoft Live Labs is a partnership between MSN and Microsoft Research that centers on applied research for Internet products and services.  This award consists of a significant unrestricted cash gift for one year and access to a proprietary dataset of a few million search queries detailing various aspects of consumer search on the Internet.

Studying the “economic value of text,” Professors Ghose and Ipeirotis are exploring how text in reputation systems, online reviews, and online blogs affect customers’ perception about different merchants and products. By measuring the economic effect of an online information exchange (i.e., changes in prices or revenues), Professors Ghose and Ipeirotis identify the economic value of a particular piece of text.  Their research combines established techniques from econometrics with text-mining algorithms from computer science to measure the economic value of each text snippet and of each online information exchange in general. 

The value of their research can be illustrated by considering an online purchase of a digital camera on Amazon.com, a site on which a product may be associated with its customer reviews.  A sample review of the camera might say, “The picture quality is fantastic, but the shutter speed lags badly.”  In practice, their research will help evaluate the positive and negative economic impact of reviews such as this one. 

About the Professors

Professor Ghose’s research expertise lies in the application of new and existing theories from economics and industrial organization to Internet commerce.  His current work examines the impact of Internet-based used goods markets on social welfare, dimensions of reputation in electronic markets, how online social communities affect product reviews, the magnitude of menu costs and search costs in electronic markets, and the impact of geographical location on consumer purchases on the Internet.  His work has been widely covered by industry outlets such as The New York Times, published in top-tier journals including Management Science, ISR and Statistical Science, and has won Best Paper nominations in premier conferences in the information systems field.

Professor Ipeirotis’ expertise in databases and information retrieval emphasizes the management of textual data.  His current research examines multiple issues related to the general area of Internet search: how to allow search engines to combine information from multiple information sources, rather than returning simple web pages; how to extract valuable and structured information from unstructured text; and how to find references to individuals, even if their name gets spelled differently in different databases.  He has published in top international technical journals and conferences, and serves on program committees of top international technical conferences.  He recently received two “Best Paper” awards, one in the 2006 ACM International Conference on Management of Data (SIGMOD 2006) and one in the 21st IEEE International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE 2005).