Harrie Oosterhuis

I am an assistant professor at the Data Science Group of the Institute of Computing and Information Sciences (iCIS) of the Radboud University. Additionally, I am currently also a visiting research scholar at Google DeepMind. My research lies on the intersection of machine learning and information retrieval, it primarily concerns learning from user interactions on rankings. In particular, I focus on methods that correct for the effects of interaction biases.

For the latest news about me or my research check out my LinkedIn profile.

My Research Topics

I’m passionate about research in Machine Learning and Information Retrieval; in particular how search and recommendation systems can learn from user interactions. While the goals of these systems is often to follow users’ preferences, the interactions of users are usually very affected by many other factors: e.g. what items are shown, the order in which they are shown, etc. As a result, these methods have to correct for these interaction biases. My research often uses theoretical methods for counterfactual estimation with machine learning approaches to optimize ranking systems.

On the long term, my line of research aims to contribute to ranking systems that can better satisfy and understand diverse user preferences that also consider the societal impact of their behavior (e.g. ranking fairness, the spreading misinformation or harmful ideas, etc.).

To see the output of my research efforts check out my Google Scholar profile or my publications page.

Background

I have completed most of my education at the University of Amsterdam. My bachelor’s and master’s degree are both in Artificial Intelligence and cum laude. During my master’s program I joined the ILPS Information Retrieval group lead by prof. dr. Maarten de Rijke as an honours student (now known as the IRLab lead by prof. dr. Evangelos Kanoulas). In addition, I completed three internships at Google Research in California during my master and PhD. Under supervision of prof. dr. Maarten de Rijke, I received my PhD cum laude for my thesis titled Learning from user interactions with rankings: A unification of the field, which received an Andreas Bonn medal from the Genootschap ter bevordering van Natuur-, Genees- en Heelkunde in 2024. Some of my works received best paper awards at ECIR’19, SIGIR’21, WSDM’21 and ICTIR’22; I’m a recipient of a 2021 Google Research Scholar Award, a 2023 Radboud Science Award, a 2024 ACM SIGIR Early Career Researcher Award and a 2022 NWO Veni Grant.

For more information on my past achievements, see my CV page.

Personal Mission

Besides my passion for research, I also find it very important to create a healthy and welcoming working environment for researchers and students. Through discussion groups and personal mentoring, I have dedicated myself to help students feel appreciated and stimulate a healthy attitude towards their research and education. I hope that this contributes to an environment where students and researchers of every background feel welcome and appreciated.