The 2026 Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (CHIIR) was held March 22-26 in Seattle, and the University of Texas School of Information was front and center, showcasing research excellence and leadership in the field. Several iSchoolers were in attendance as presenters, and two received awards. Please join us in congratulating the participants and winners!
Professor Soo Young Rieh, along with her co-authors from other institutions, won the first-ever Test-of-Time Award for the paper “Assessing Learning Outcomes in Web Search: A Comparison of Tasks and Query Strategies.” Also, Dr. Rieh and PhD student Yujin Choi won Best Short Paper for “Interest-Driven Search in AI-Mediated Information Environments: An Audio Diary Study.”
The iSchool was exceptionally well represented in the CHIIR Doctoral Consortium, with PhD students Klara (Zhitong) Guan, Jiaxin An and Choi attending. These three students accounted for nearly half of the participants. Associate Professor Jacek Gwizdka served as a mentor, reinforcing the iSchool’s leadership.
Dr. Gwizdka’s Information Experience (IX) Lab at the iSchool was a driving force at the conference. Gwizdka presented two papers -- “Attention! Rethinking What We Measure in CHIIR Studies” with doctoral student Dan Zhang and Bullard post-doctoral fellow Gavindya Jayawardena, and “Effects of Working Memory Capacity and Search Task Complexity on Cognitive Load” with Jayawardena and doctoral student Li Shi.
The first IX Lab paper, presented by Zhang, challenges assumptions about attention measurement and highlights differences between measured attention and actual cognitive attention. The latter paper, presented by Jayawardena, explores how working memory and task complexity influence decision-making, fact-checking, and cognitive load. Congrats to both presenters on a job well done!
The IX Lab’s podcast, IX Lab Research, can be found on all major platforms, including Apple and Spotify.