{"id":788,"date":"2015-07-11T12:07:18","date_gmt":"2015-07-11T12:07:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staff.fnwi.uva.nl\/m.derijke\/?page_id=788"},"modified":"2026-03-21T17:35:52","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T17:35:52","slug":"phd-students","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/staff.fnwi.uva.nl\/m.derijke\/people\/phd-students\/","title":{"rendered":"PhD students"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a>
Covers of theses written by my PhD students<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Current PhD students<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\n
Andreas Paraskeva works on parsimonious architectures for large language models. At Leiden University, co-supervised with Jan van Rijn and Suzan Verberne.\n<\/td><\/tr>\n
Clara Rus works on fairness-aware learning to rank. Co-supervised with Andrew Yates.\n<\/td><\/tr>\n
Cornelius Wolff works on insight recommendation from structured data. At CWI, co-supervised with Madelon Hulsebos.\n<\/td><\/tr>\n
Daniel Gomm works on gaining insights from structured data. At CWI, co-supervised with Madelon Hulsebos.\n<\/td><\/tr>\n
David Vos works on generative information retrieval models in news search. Co-supervised with Harrie Oosterhuis.\n<\/td><\/tr>\n
Dominykas Seputis works on generative search and recommendation.\n<\/td><\/tr>\n
Ece Erdem works on link recommendation. Co-supervised with Fernando dos Santos.\n<\/td><\/tr>\n
Gionata Bouch\u00e8 works on legal aspects of generative AI. At the Institute for Information Law, co-supervised with Natali Helberger and Max van Drunen.\n<\/td><\/tr>\n
Jasmin Kareem works on explainable recommendation. At Eindhoven University of Technology, co-supervised with Martijn Willemsen.\n<\/td><\/tr>\n
Jingwei Kang works on full-page personalization. Co-supervised with Harrie Oosterhuis.\n<\/td><\/tr>\n
Kidist Mekonnen works on generative information retrieval. Co-supervised with Andrew Yates.\n<\/td><\/tr>\n
Lu Zhang works on understanding user behavior in conversational systems. Co-supervised with Mohammad Aliannejadi.\n
Maurus Enbergs works on emergence in hybrid intelligent systems. At TU Delft, co-supervised with Roel Dobbe and Martijn Warnier.\n<\/td><\/tr>\n
Mingwei Zhang works on search and recommendation for climate change impact. At Leiden University, co-supervised with Zhaochun Ren.\n<\/td><\/tr>\n
Mohanna Hoveyda works on entity linking in conversational search. At Radboud University, co-supervised with Faegheh Hasibi.\n<\/td><\/tr>\n
Peibo Li works on graph-based methods for forecasting. At the University of New South Wales, co-supervised with Flora Salim and Yang Song.\n<\/td><\/tr>\n
Pierre Lubitzsch works on unlearning for recommender systems. At the TU Berlin, co-supervised with Sebastian Schelter.\n<\/td><\/tr>\n
Roxana Petcu works on neural retrieval and negation. Co-supervised with Evangelos Kanoulas.\n<\/td><\/tr>\n
Rui Zhao works on generative search and recommendation.<\/td><\/tr>\n
Sami Jullien works on reinforcement learning and supply\u00a0chain optimization. He joined the EPO in Munich. Co-supervised with Paul Groth. \n<\/td><\/tr>\n
Shaojie Jiang works on engagement and text quality in conversational systems. He joined SKIM in Rotterdam. Co-supervised with Svitlana Vakulenko and Ruqing Zhang. \n<\/td><\/tr>\n
Shiguang Wu works on generative search and recommendation.\n<\/td><\/tr>\n
Xinyi Chen works on scalability and generative information retrieval. Co-supervised with Jan van Rijn and Anders S\u00f8rgaard.\n<\/td><\/tr>\n
Yuanna Liu works on recommender systems. Co-supervised with Mohammad Aliannejadi.\n<\/td><\/tr>\n<\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>Former PhD students<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\n
85.<\/td>Pooya Khandel (PhD 2026, planned). Promotores: Andy Pimentel and Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotores: Ana Varbanescu and Andrew Yates. Pooya worked on efficiency of information retrieval methods. Pooya joined ING. \n<\/td><\/tr>\n\n
84.<\/td>Philipp Hager (PhD 2026, planned). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Onno Zoeter. Philipp worked on bridging online and offline evaluation for search and recommendation. Philipp joined Booking.com in Amsterdam.
83.<\/td>Amin Abolghasemi (PhD 2026). Promotores: Suzan Verberne and Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Leif Azzopardi. Amin worked on evaluation of conversational systems at Leiden University. He joined ING as a data scientist.
82.<\/td>Thilina Rajapakse (PhD 2026). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Andrew Yates. Thilina worked on neural information retrieval. He joined the Eindhoven University of Technology as a postdoc.
81.<\/td>Maria Heuss (PhD 2025). Promotores: Maarten de Rijke and Avishek Anand. Maria worked on fairness and explainability in information retrieval. She joined the University of Amsterdam as an assistant professor.
80.<\/td>Yuyue Zhao (PhD 2025). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Jin Huang. Yuyue worked on generative recommender systems.
79.<\/td>Fatemeh Sarvi (PhD 2025). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Sebastian Schelter. Fatemeh worked on unbiased learning to rank for product search. She joined Albert Heijn in Zaandam.
78.<\/td>Shashank Gupta (PhD 2025). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Harrie Oosterhuis. Shashank worked on unbiased learning to rank from interactions.
77.<\/td>Vaishali Pal (PhD 2025). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Evangelos Kanoulas. Vaishali worked on information seeking over semi-structured tabular data.
76.<\/td>Clemencia Siro (PhD 2025). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Mohammad Aliannejadi. Clemencia worked on evaluation of conversational user interactions. Clemencia is a postdoc at CWI in Amsterdam.
75.<\/td>Barrie Kersbergen (PhD 2025). Promotores: Maarten de Rijke and Sebastian Schelter. Barrie worked on benchmarking and scaling session-based recommendation. Barrie works for Bol in Utrecht.
74.<\/td>Yougang Lyu (PhD 2025). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Zhaochun Ren. Yougang worked on aligning language models with human understanding and behavior.
73.<\/td>Chuan Meng (PhD 2025). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Mohammad Aliannejadi. Chuan worked on agentic workflows for information access systems. Chuan is a postdoc at the University of Edinburgh.
72.<\/td>Georgios Sidiropoulos (PhD 2025). Promotor: Evangelos Kanoulas. Co-promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Georgios worked on neural information retrieval in noisy and low-resource settings. Georgios joined Bol.
71.<\/td>Mariya Hendriksen (PhD 2024). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Paul Groth. Mariya worked on multi-modal retrieval. Mariya is a postdoc at the University of Oxford.
70.<\/td>Zihan Wang (PhD 2024). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Zhaochun Ren. Zihan worked at the interface of information extraction and information retrieval.
69.<\/td>Romain Deffayet (PhD 2024). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Jean-Michel Renders. Romain worked on reinforcement learning for search and recommendation. He is with Naver Labs Europe.
68.<\/td>Olivier Sprangers (PhD 2024). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Sebastian Schelter. Olivier worked on forecasting in large-scale settings. He joined Nixtla.
67.<\/td>Maurits Bleeker (PhD 2024). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Andrew Yates. Maurits worked on multi-modal retrieval. He joined NXAI.
66.<\/td>Gabriel B\u00e9n\u00e9dict (PhD 2024). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Daan Odijk. Gabriel worked on personalization on video platforms. He joined Amazon in Madrid.
65.<\/td>Ming Li (PhD 2024). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Andrew Yates. Ming worked on next basket recommendation. He joined Expedia in London.
64.<\/td>Jin Huang (PhD 2024). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotores: Herke van Hoof and Harrie Oosterhuis. Jin worked on reinforcement learning to rank. She joined the QurAI team at the University of Amsterdam to work as a postdoc.
63.<\/td>Mozhdeh Ariannezhad (PhD 2023). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Sebastian Schelter. Mozdeh worked on user-oriented recommender systems in retail. She joined Booking.com in Amsterdam.
62.<\/td>Yang Fang (PhD 2023). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Andrew Yates. Yang worked on heterogeneous information networks for recommender systems. He is with NUDT now.
61.<\/td>Ali Vardasbi (PhD 2023). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Mostafa Dehgani. Ali worked on bias and fairness in learning to rank. He joined Spotify in Amsterdam.
60.<\/td>Maartje ter Hoeve (PhD 2023). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Julia Kiseleva. Maartje worked on human-centered language technology. She joined Apple.
59.<\/td>Jiahuan Pei (PhD 2022). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Pengjie Ren. Jiahuan worked on task-oriented dialogue systems. She joined CWI in Amsterdam.
58.<\/td>Yangjun Zhang (PhD 2022). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Pengjie Ren. Yangjun worked on recognizing and classifying harmful content generated by conversational systems. She joined Queen Mary University London.
57.<\/td>Ana Lucic (PhD 2022). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Hinda Haned. Ana worked on explainability in AI. She joined Microsoft Research in Amsterdam.
56.<\/td>Jie Zou (PhD 2021). Promotor: Evangelos Kanoulas. Co-promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Jie worked on generating clarifying questions in the context of conversational search. He joined the Nanyang Technological University.
55.<\/td>Chang Li (PhD 2021). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Masrour Zoghi. Chang worked on online learning to rank. He joined Apple.
54.<\/td>Nikos Voskarides (PhD 2021). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Edgar Meij. Nikos worked on semantic search. Nikos joined Amazon in Barcelona.
53.<\/td>Wanyu Chen (PhD 2021). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Fei Cai. Wanyu worked on recommender systems. She is with NUDT now.
52.<\/td>Ziming Li (PhD 2020). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Julia Kiseleva. Ziming worked on optimizing interactive systems. He joined Amazon in Seattle.
51.<\/td>Rolf Jagerman (PhD 2020). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Ilya Markov. Rolf worked on online learning to rank. He now works for Google in Amsterdam.
50.<\/td>Harrie Oosterhuis (PhD 2020). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Evangelos Kanoulas. Harrie worked on counterfactual and online learning to rank. He joined the faculty at the Radboud University Nijmegen.
49.<\/td>Dan Li (PhD 2020). Promotor: Evangelos Kanoulas. Co-promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Dan worked on interactive information retrieval and its evaluation. She joined Elsevier.
48.<\/td>Chuan Wu (PhD 2020). Promotores: Evangelos Kanoulas and Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Wei Lu. Chuan worked on entity search and mining. After defending his PhD, Chuan became a postdoc at Central China Normal University\u00a0in Wuhan.
47.<\/td>Hamidreza Ghader\u00a0(PhD 2020). Promotor: Christof Monz. Co-promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Hamid worked on machine translation. He now works for Contexta360 in Amsterdam.
46.<\/td>Praveen Dakwale (PhD 2020). Promotor: Christof Monz. Co-promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Praveen worked on machine translation. He joined Wolters Kluwer in Alphen aan de Rijn.
45.<\/td>Mostafa Dehghani (PhD 2020). Promotores: Jaap Kamps and Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Maarten Marx. Mostafa worked on learning from limited or noisy data for language understanding. He joined Google Brain in Amsterdam.
44.<\/td>Anna Sepliarskaia (PhD 2019). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotores: Julia Kiseleva and Filip Radlinski. Anna worked on inferring users’ information goals by using logs, asking questions, and understanding users’ answers to questions. After defending her PhD, Anna joined Amazon.\u00a0
43.<\/td>Svitlana Vakulenko (PhD 2019). Promotores: Axel Polleres and Maarten de Rijke. Svitlana worked on knowledge-based conversational search. Svitlana joined Amazon.
42.<\/td>Yifan Chen (PhD 2019). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Ilya Markov. Yifan worked on machine learning for top-N recommendations. Yifan joined NUDT.
41.<\/td>Hosein Azarbonyad (PhD 2019). Promotores: Jaap Kamps and Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Maarten Marx. Hosein worked on exploratory search over semi-structured documents. He joined KLM in Amsterdam.
40.<\/td>Artem Grotov (PhD 2018). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Julia Kiseleva. Artem worked on methods for improving interactive systems such as search engines by using interaction data. He joined GoDataDriven in Amsterdam.
39.<\/td>Xinyi Li (PhD 2018). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Evangelos Kanoulas. Xinyi worked on academic search and especially mining academic search logs. He works at Baidu, in Beijing, China.
38.<\/td>Alexey Borisov (PhD 2018). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Pavel Serdyukov. Alexey worked on modeling and predicting information interaction behavior. Alexey joined Yandex in Moscow.
37.<\/td>Tom Kenter (PhD 2017). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Joris van Eijnatten. Tom worked on neural network based methods for making machines understand text. He joined Google in London.
36.<\/td>Ekaterina Garmash (PhD 2017). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Christof Monz. Katya worked on using structural differences between languages to enhance machine translation quality. She joined KLM in Amsterdam.
35.<\/td>Marlies van der Wees (PhD 2017). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Christof Monz. Marlies worked on domain adaptation for machine translation. She joined De Persgroep in Amsterdam.
34.<\/td>Christophe Van Gysel (PhD 2017). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Evangelos Kanoulas. Christophe worked on neural network based methods for information retrieval, especially for entity search. Christophe joined Apple.
33.<\/td>David Graus (PhD 2017). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Manos Tsagkias. David worked on semantic search. He joined the FD Mediagroep in Amsterdam.
32.<\/td>Ridho Reinanda (PhD 2017). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Fridus Steijlen. Ridho worked on semantic search and information extraction. He joined Bloomberg in London.
31.<\/td>Aleksandr Chuklin (PhD 2017). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Evangelos Kanoulas. Aleksandr worked on modeling and understanding users of modern search engines. Aleksandr joined Google in Zurich.
30.<\/td>Masrour Zoghi (PhD 2017). Promotores: Peter Apers and Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Djoerd Hiemstra. Masrour worked on bandit algorithms for online ranker evaluation. Masrour joined Google, in Mountain View, USA.
29.<\/td>Spyros Martzoukos (PhD 2016). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Christof Monz. Spyros worked on bilingual aligned corpora.
28.<\/td>Zhaochun Ren (PhD 2016). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Evangelos Kanoulas. Zhaochun worked on social media search and analysis. He joined JD.com in Beijing.
27.<\/td>Bj\u00f6rn Burscher (PhD 2016). Promotores: Claes de Vreese and Rens Vliegenthart. Co-promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Bjorn worked on machine learning-based content analysis. He joined Klue in Vancouver, Canada.
26.<\/td>Fei Cai (PhD 2016). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Honghui Chen. Fei worked on query auto-completion. He joined NUDT in Changsha, China.
25.<\/td>Daan Odijk (PhD 2016). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Edgar Meij. Daan worked on exploratory search. He joined RTL, in Amsterdam.
24.<\/td>Anne Schuth (PhD 2016). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Shimon Whiteson. Anne worked on online learning to rank. He joined De Persgroep in Amsterdam.
23.<\/td>Evgeny Sherkhonov (PhD 2016). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Maarten Marx. Evgeny worked on query containment problems for query languages over trees and relational databases and on so-called why-not explanations. He joined the University of Oxford.\n
22.<\/td>Richard Berendsen (PhD 2015). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Krisztian Balog. Richard worked on search engine evaluation methodologies. He joined Luminis.eu, in Amsterdam.
21.<\/td>Maria-Hendrike Peetz (PhD 2015). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Willemijn van Dolen. Hendrike worked on search and analysis algorithms for reputation analysis. She joined Google in Zurich.
20.<\/td>Shangsong Liang (PhD 2014). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Shangsong worked on fusion and diversity in information retrieval. He joined Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou.
19.<\/td>Marc Bron (PhD 2013). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotores: Krisztian Balog and Frank Nack. Marc worked on exploratory search. He joined the Schibsted Media company in London.
18.<\/td>Katja Hofmann (PhD 2013). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Shimon Whiteson. Katja worked on learning to rank online. She joined Microsoft Research, in Cambridge.
17.<\/td>Manos Tsagkias (PhD 2012). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Manos worked on social media analytics. He joined Apple.
16.<\/td>Simon Carter (PhD 2012). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Christof Monz. Simon worked on machine translation. He works with HSBC Global Banking and Markets, in London.
15.<\/td>Wouter Weerkamp (PhD 2011). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Wouter worked on search and analysis technology for social media. He joined TomTom.
14.<\/td>Jiyin He (PhD 2011). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Jiyin worked on topic structure, and especially on coherence, diversity and link generation. She joined Signal Media, London.
13.<\/td>Edgar Meij (PhD 2010). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Edgar worked on concept-based information retrieval. He joined Bloomberg in London.\n
12.<\/td>Bouke Huurnink (PhD 2010). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Arnold Smeulders. Bouke worked on text analysis for multimedia retrieval. He joined Xite in Amsterdam.
11.<\/td>Loredana Afanasiev (PhD 2009). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Maarten Marx. Loredana worked on the evaluation and foundations of XML query evaluation. She joined Google in Mountain View, USA.
10.<\/td>Krisztian Balog (PhD 2008). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Krisztian worked on people search in the enterprise. He joined the University of Stavanger, Norway.
9.<\/td>Caterina Caracciolo (PhD 2008). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotores: Joost Kircz and Guglielmo Tamburrini. Caterina worked on information access to electronic handbooks. She joined the FAO in Rome.
8.<\/td>Gilad Mishne (PhD 2007). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Gilad worked on text analytics for blogs. He joined Google.
7.<\/td>B\u00f6rkur Sigurbj\u00f6rnsson (PhD 2006). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Co-promotor: Jaap Kamps. B\u00f6rkur worked on the use of XML element retrieval for focused information access. He joined PLACEMAKE.IO in London, UK.
6.<\/td>Valentin Jijkoun (PhD 2006). Promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Valentin worked on graph transformations for natural language processing. He joined Textkernel in Amsterdam.
5.<\/td>Gabriel Gaston Infante-Lopez (PhD 2005). Promotores: Maarten de Rijke and Remko Scha. Jointly supervised by Remko Scha. Gabriel worked on probabilistic parsing. He joined Intel in Cordoba, Argentina.
4.<\/td>Christof Monz (PhD 2003). Promotores: Franciska de Jong and Remko Scha. Co-promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Christof worked on document retrieval in the context of question answering. He joined the University of Amsterdam.
3.<\/td>Juan Heguiabehere (PhD 2003). Promotor: Jan van Eijck. Co-promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Juan worked on computational modal logic and dynamic first order logic. He joined the Fundacion Sadosky in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
2.<\/td>Rosella Gennari (PhD 2002). Promotor: Krzysztof Apt. Co-promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Rosella worked on constraint propagation and automated reasoning for modal logic. She joined the University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy.
<\/td>Wiet Bouma (PhD …). Wiet used to work for KPN Research and was pursueing a PhD on feature interaction in telecommunication. Sadly, before Wiet was able to complete his thesis, he died of cancer on October 26, 2001.<\/td><\/tr>\n
1.<\/td>Carlos Areces (PhD 2000). Promotor: Johan van Benthem. Co-promotor: Maarten de Rijke. Carlos worked on the theory and applications of restricted description languages such as modal logic, hybrid logic, description logic. He joined the University of Cordoba, in Argentina.