Damiano Spina

Dr. Damiano Spina is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computing Technologies at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. He is an Associate Investigator at the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S), the RMIT Research Lead at the Australian Internet Observatory (AIO), and a member of the International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE). He received his PhD in Computer Science from UNED (Spain) in 2014.

His research focuses on Information Retrieval (IR), Text Analytics, and Human-AI interaction, with particular emphasis on interactive IR (including conversational assistants) and the evaluation of information access systems, encompassing both effectiveness measures and fairness-aware evaluation.

Dr. Spina has authored over 90 peer-reviewed publications in leading conferences (ACM SIGIR, ACM UbiComp, ACM CIKM, ACM SIGIR CHIIR, ECIR, CLEF) and journals (ACM TOIS, IP&M, JASIST). He serves as Associate Editor for ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS), and served on the editorial board of Information Processing & Management (2020 - 2025). He has organized multiple workshops, tutorials, and evaluation campaigns, and held leadership roles including Sponsorship Chair (ACM WSDM 2019, ACM CIKM 2021, ACM SIGIR CHIIR 2021), Short Paper Co-Chair (ACM SIGIR CHIIR 2025), Lab Co-Chair (CLEF 2025), and Local Organizing Co-Chair (ACM SIGIR 2026).

His contributions have been recognized with awards such as Best Evaluation Paper (ECIR 2019), Best Short Paper (ECIR 2020), and Best Poster Award (UbiComp 2023). He has also received the ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA, 2020 - 2023) and the 2021 RMIT Award for Research Impact (Technology).

Beyond academia, Dr. Spina is known as Contramestre Camaleão in the Capoeira community, teaching the Afro-Brazilian martial art at Associação de Capoeira Descendente do Pantera (ACDP), and performs samba music with the Melbourne-based band Wombatuque.

Website: https://www.damianospina.com

• Computer Science and Capoeira: Two Sides of the Same Coin?
  Computer Science seeks to study and advance the principles and applications of computing. Capoeira, on the other hand, is an Afro-Brazilian cultural practice that blends sport, body movement,...
• Decolonizing Information Retrieval Research
  The field of information retrieval, like much of computer science, has been shaped predominantly by Western-centric frameworks that influence how problems are defined, investigated, and addressed....
• Human-AI Cooperation to Tackle Misinformation
  The unprecedented speed and scale at which misinformation spreads online have fueled a global information crisis. At the same time, rapid advances in generative Artificial Intelligence (AI),...
• Responsible AI from the Lens of an Information Retrieval Researcher
  The rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has brought immense benefits across numerous domains, but it is also well-known that it raises important challenges in terms of ethical and...