Seco is internally organized with seven teams:
- Theory and Methods, coordinated by Davide Martinenghi, including expertise in operations research (Edoardo Amaldi will contribute here, together with Marco Tagliasacchi). The team will provide us with methods with known performance and guarantees, to be then used in the rest of the work.
- Service Registration and Management, coordinated by Alessandro Campi, together with Stefania Ronchi, a PhD student. The purpose is guaranteeing the registration of new search services, their semantic description, and the production of relevant parameters. We envision informal and quick registration of "mywebsite" as a topic for this group.
- Query Processing, coordinated by Daniele Braga, including Davide Barbieri and the ETH post-doc Michael Grossniklaus from ETH. The purpose is developing an operation-based model of SeCo enabling the mapping of user queries into execution plans and the selection of "optimal" execution plans.
- Interaction Design, coordinated by Piero Fraternali and Alessandro Bozzon, including Sara Comai, Maristella Matera, and the PhD student Davide Mazza. Issues to be covered include technological paradigms for improving interaction, as well as the design of effective feedback methods for involving users in producing the answer to queries. The group currently includes the two MS students Andrea Vaccarella and Michel Follo.
- Tools, coordinated by Marco Brambilla, specialized both in the development of developer-oriented tools and of user-oriented tools. The first task of the group will be developing a demonstrator of the "current" technology; the prototyping effort will be coordinated by the post-doc Alessandro Bozzon, and include MS students Riccardo Volonterio and the post-graduate Chiara Pasini. The group will then evolve according to the directions that will be set in the project.
- Business Models and Technology Watch, coordinated by Emanuele Della Valle, with contribution from Roberto Verganti and Tommaso Buganza from DIG, Nicola Gatti and the PhD Student Sofia Ceppi from DEI (everyone except Emanuele is not a member of the db-group). The group has the objective of setting the strategic directions of the project, by offering a "technological watch" (looking at what we have and what others have) and then discussing "scenarios" that can lead to better results from all perspectives, including business. In this group, Roberto will hire a new student from DIG.
- Concept Team, coordinated by Stefano Ceri, including the team coordinators, has the ultimate responsibility for coordinating the project, deciding the planning and milestones, deciding about technological standards, and integrating the various parts. The concept group will make sure that the various teams share the same objectives and will ultimately produce cohesive results. The group will manage resource allocation, including human resources (although everyone is ultimately free to contribute to more than one team and to work on more than one topic, so far I indicated for every person one "main mission" but there are overlaps).
We have deliberately left out, for the time being, issues such as cooperation (Web 2.0) or dynamic selection of search services (advanced Web 3.0). We are aware that they are relevant but they are left for future times.
