As the Internet grows exponentially every year, information on the Web has been explosively increasing and the volume of unstructured or semi-structured data is growing at a phenomenal rate. Powerful information retrieval techniques are needed to help people process the Web information. A vertical search engine targets at identifying relevant information in specific domains or topics and eventually provides users with the most up-to-date information, highly focused insights, and actionable knowledge representation. My research is on building the next generation vertical search engine including solutions to the following problems: knowledge organization, resource identification, and results presentation. Effective algorithms are developed to generate meaningful concept hierarchies based on the hierarchical clustering framework and on applying data-mining techniques to disaster management domain.

Li Zheng obtained his Bachelor's and Master's degree in Computer Science from Sichuan University, China in 2004 and 2007. He has been a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Computing and Information Sciences at FIU since 2008 Fall. From 2009, he has been the student leader of the Disaster Management group in the School of Computing and Information Sciences. His research work is in the area of Disaster Management, Algorithms in Hierarchical Clustering and Vertical Search Engine.