Letter from the Chair

Greetings SIGIR Members! I am pleased to be writing my first letter as SIGIR Chair, serving with Ryen White (Vice Chair), Carsten Eickhoff (Treasurer), and Laura Dietz (Secretary), under the patient guidance of Ben Carterette (Past Chair). I would like to sincerely thank the previous committee: in addition to Ben, Tetsuya Sakai (Vice Chair), Claudia Hauff (Secretary), Min Zhang (Treasurer), and Diane Kelly (Past Chair) for the many initiatives they accomplished during their tenure. Their term started with SIGIR in Paris, in a record 42-degree heat, followed by an extremely challenging and unexpected shift to online conferences due to the global COVID pandemic. In addition to providing guidance to conference organizers, and funding for student travel and other programs, they initiated the SIGIR Academy to recognize sustained contributions to the field (thank you to Ryen White, Hannah Bast, and Gianluca Demartini), the Early Career Researchers Award (thank you to Johanne Trippas), and the DEI checklist (thank you to Bárbara Poblete, Hussein Suleman and Suzan Verberne). Finally, their term welcomed the creation of a new conference (SIGIR-AP) which will be held in November/December in the Asia-Pacific, with a steering committee chaired by Alistair Moffat and Yiqun Liu. These programs represent big improvements to the recognition and representation in the SIGIR community.