Doug Oard

Doug Oard is a Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, holding joint appointments in the College of Information Studies and the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS). His research focuses on enhancing information retrieval across languages, speech, and sensitive content, with notable contributions to cross-language information retrieval (CLIR), eDiscovery, and evaluation design for information systems. He leads efforts in developing test collections for evaluating retrieval systems, including work on the TREC and CLEF evaluation forums.

Key research areas include multilingual information access, speech retrieval, and computational social science. Oard has pioneered methods for evaluating machine translation, automated speech recognition, and the retrieval of historical or archival content. He has contributed to projects like the Apollo Mission Control Archive and the Multilingual TEDx Corpus, advancing accessibility to spoken and written materials across languages.

His work emphasizes practical applications, such as improving legal eDiscovery processes and developing tools for searching sensitive or informal text. Oard has authored over 200 peer-reviewed publications and led major international evaluation initiatives, driving advancements in information retrieval systems' reliability and cross-cultural utility.