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 (EEMCS/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 remains the co-director of the People and Information Research Team (Piret) at Boise State University. She is also a co-PI in the ongoing NSF-funded project CAST (Child Adaptive Search Tool). She is part of an international and interdisciplinary group of researchers interested in advancing research pertaining to information retrieval systems that can support education.
Prior to joining TU Delft, Sole (a native from 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 Associated Professor with Tenure in 2019.
Research Interests:
Information Retrieval, Web Search, Recommender Systems, Readability, Information Systems, 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