I am an Associate Professor at Virginia Tech, where I currently serve as Associate Dean and Executive Director for Information Technology in the University Libraries, and Director for the Center for Digital Research and Scholarship.
My research integrates information retrieval, natural language processing, and machine learning to study computational evaluation over scholarly corpora. Current work investigates how institutional knowledge can be computationally represented, inferred, operationalized, and reused under conditions of uncertainty, heterogeneity, and incomplete formalization. Much of this research uses electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) as large-scale, institutionally grounded research corpora.
I received a B.A. in Cognitive Science from the University of Virginia, an M.S. in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science at Virginia Tech under the supervision of Professor Edward A. Fox. My doctoral research examined computational evaluation over scholarly corpora using information retrieval, natural language processing, and machine learning, with particular emphasis on goal-conditioned relevance, retrieval under interpretive uncertainty, and institutional-scale research intelligence.
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- 🔭 Current research: computational evaluation over scholarly corpora, including goal-conditioned relevance and institutional research intelligence.
- 🌱 Current technical interests: large language model distillation, retrieval-augmented generation, and scientific foundation models.
- 👯 Open to collaboration on information retrieval, scholarly corpora, AI for research infrastructure, and institutional analytics.
- 💬 Ask me about scholarly infrastructure, AI in research libraries, ETDs, and research intelligence systems.
- 📫 How to reach me: bill-ingram.com | Bluesky | Instagram | LinkedIn