ABOUT

Dr. Maria Soledad Pera is an Associate Professor at the Web Information Systems group of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EWI), Delft University of Technology. Sole's main area of expertise is in Information Retrieval with emphasis on non-traditional populations. Her current research work focuses on understanding the limitations and designing algorithmic support so that information access systems (search and recommender tools) can better serve all users (e.g., children) in different contexts (e.g., the classroom).

Sole is a co-PI in the ongoing SNSF-funded project “Scaffolding to foster independence when children search Online for Learning” (SOL),. She is part of an international and interdisciplinary group of researchers interested in advancing research on information retrieval systems that can support education.

Prior to joining TU Delft, Sole (a native of Argentina) completed Ph.D. in Computer Science at Brigham Young University in 2014. She joined the Computer Science Department at Boise State University as an Assistant Professor in 2014, where she was promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure in 2019. While at Boise State, Sole was a co-PI in the NSF-funded project CAST (Child Adaptive Search Tool). She was the co-director of the People and Information Research Team (Piret) alongside Dr. Michael Ektrand.

Research Interests:

Information Retrieval, Information Access, Web Search, Recommender Systems, User Modeling, Readability, Natural Language Processing, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Databases, System Analysis.


EDUCATION

Ph.D. in Computer Science April 2014
Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA
Proposed Dissertation Topic: "Using Online Data Sources to Make Recommendations on Reading Materials for K-12 and Advanced Readers"
Advisor: Dr. Yiu-Kai Ng

M.S. in Computer Science April 2009  
Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA 
Thesis: "Improving Library Searches Using Word-Correlation Factors and Folksonomies"
Advisor: Dr. Yiu-Kai Ng

B.S. in Information Systems Analysis September 2006  
Universidad Tecnologica Nacional, Rosario, Argentina