What is the Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval (CIIR) at UMass Amherst?

Updated

CIIR is the Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Its site, ciir.cs.umass.edu, is the center's public hub for news, research projects, publications, people, and membership information. It is worth browsing if you want to follow academic information retrieval (IR) and AI search work, find CIIR papers and downloads, or see who is involved in the center.

What CIIR is

The site identifies CIIR as a center at UMass Amherst working on AI and Information Access. Its navigation is organized around the center's activities rather than around a product:

  • About — laboratories, vision, mission, and history
  • Research — current projects, completed projects, downloads, and publications
  • People — faculty, postdocs/researchers, staff, graduate students, alumni, and visitors
  • Membership — members and membership information
  • News — latest updates from the center
  • Contact Us / Join Us — ways to reach or join the center

That structure tells you what the site is for: it is a research-center website, not a commercial search engine or a documentation portal.

What it covers

The research side spans information retrieval and related disciplines. The site lists current and completed projects, publications, and downloads, and it hosts a CIIR Talk Series where researchers and practitioners speak about IR and related work, held biweekly on Fridays.

The news page shows the center's recent activity and recognition, including:

  • Project Naget, unveiled October 7, 2026 on the CIIR's 34th anniversary, described as bringing the center's research to a new generation of real-world AI search technology. The site describes Naget (naget.com) as a trusted information layer for agents that provides search.
  • A SIGIR 2026 Test of Time Award Honorable Mention for Jeffrey Dalton, Laura Dietz, and James Allan for their 2014 paper on entity query feature expansion using knowledge base links.
  • CIIR gatherings of current researchers and alumni, including one in Palo Alto, CA on September 29, 2026 and one at SIGIR 2026 in Australia.

When to use this site

Use it if you want to:

  • Track CIIR's research output and follow new IR papers (the news page points to Hamed Zamani on Twitter for descriptions of new IR papers).
  • Find publications, project descriptions, or downloads from the center.
  • Identify faculty, researchers, or alumni for collaboration, recruiting, or academic contact.
  • Learn about membership or joining the center.

If you need a working search product or API, this site is not that; it is the center's informational home, and any tools it references are described through its research and news pages.

Practical notes

  • The site sits under the UMass Amherst domain and shares the university's global navigation (Visit, Apply, Give, Search UMass.edu).
  • The page includes a Subscribe to Latest News option and a Free Book Download link. The excerpt does not state terms, pricing, or login requirements for these, so check the linked pages before assuming what access involves.
  • Dates on the news items run into 2026, so treat the news page as the current source for what the center is doing rather than relying on older summaries.