Internet Search Possible without Search Engines

Specialists from the HSE’s Nizhny Novgorod campus plan to create a new system of structuring data and accounting of webpages. The Laboratory of Algorithms and Technologies for Networks Analysis has won a grant from the Russian Science Foundation to study ‘Clustering and Search Techniques in Large Scale Networks.’

The Laboratory of Algorithms and Technologies for Networks Analysis (LATNA) was created in October 2011 after the announcement of winners of a grant from the Russian government to support scientific research conducted under the direction of leading scholars in Russian universities. Panos Pardalos, Distinguished Professor at the University of Florida, became the laboratory’s head.

In total, 30 winners received support from the Russian Science Foundation. Projects are being carried out jointly by Russian and foreign researchers (with the share of Russian researchers in a group making up no more than 50%). Grants range from 5 to 10 million roubles annually.

The project ‘Clustering and Search Techniques in Large Scale Networks’ could have a wide range of applications, but as the name implies, it primarily concerns proper clustering (search for datasets that are most closely related to one another), as well as a quick search of relevant nodes in large networks. It is expected that the project will result in an original processing system for data structures and accounting of webpages that will allow for fast and relevant search of necessary information without the need for professionals resorting to internet giants, such as Google, Yahoo, Yandex and others. The first tests of the system carried out by a young member of the laboratory, Alexander Ponomarenko, showed the promise of the new approach.

Young laboratory staff members were the initiators of the project. The grant application was prepared by Mikhail Batsyn, Leading Research Fellow at LATNA, and the international project team was formed with the help of the project manager – Professor Panos Pardalos. The research group will consist of ten researchers – five Russians and five foreign specialists – and the project will last two years.

Mario Guarracino (Italian National Research Council), Nenad Mladenovic (University of Valenciennes and Hainaut-Cambresis, France), Theodore Trafalis (University of Oklahoma, USA) and Leonidas Pitsoulis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece) are among the foreign researchers.

‘Our foreign partners have already been in Russia. Some of them came as guest lecturers at the summer school, which we have held every year since May 2009,’ said Valery Kalyagin, head of LATNA. ‘We had more who wanted to participate, but because the grant’s terms and conditions call for foreign researchers spending a month in Russia – from October to December 2014 – not everyone was able to take part.’

The Russian side is represented by the staff from LATNA and the HSE Nizhny Novgorod, primarily young participants (four of them are around 30 years old): Mikhail Batsyn; Valery Kalyagin; Andrey Savchenko, Associate Professor of Information Systems and Technologies; Alexander Ponomarenko, Lecturer in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Informatics; and Alexey Nikolaev, trainee researcher at LATNA.

Moreover, the project calls for involving undergraduate and graduate students from the Faculty of Business Informatics and Applied Mathematics at the HSE Nizhny Novgorod. Research tasks will serve as topics for students’ term papers and graduation theses.

Maria Glazyrina, fourth-year student (Faculty of Law) and intern at the HSE news portal