His project is entitled: UNITE: Robust Generative Information Retrieval.

In today's information-driven world, search engines are vital connectors. Yet, they often prioritize immediate results over broader societal values like fairness and diversity. De Rijke’s project tackles this challenge head-on, proposing a paradigm shift towards generative retrieval systems. The research will concentrate on three critical areas to ensure generative information retrieval systems can uphold verifiable guarantees. The first concerns accuracy, where the goal is to ensure that information is precise and presented within well-defined, explained contexts of usage. The second is reliability, where the aim is to demonstrate consistent and equitable retrieval performance across various sensitive attributes. And third is resilience, building robustness against unexpected data shifts and deliberate manipulation attempts.

Furthermore, the project will develop methods to probe these generative information retrieval systems, enhancing their explainability, reproducibility, and overall safety for the search engines of tomorrow. De Rijke’s project represents a significant step towards developing more trustworthy, equitable, and robust information access for everyone.