Evolution of retrieval models: from humble beginnings to modern days

This course will cover the history of development of retrieval models: from Binary Independence, 2-Poiosson Model and BM25 to language modeling based approaches to Information Retrieval, Markov Random Field and feature-based learning-to-rank retrieval models.

Introduction to the world of NoSQL databases

This course will discuss the motivation behind the emergence of NoSQL movement and introduce the key theoretical concepts in distributed databases (consistency, availability, durability and polyglot persistence). The course will also cover pros and cons of particular types of NoSQL databases (key-value, document, column-family and graph) and include the examples of using the API of certain NoSQL databases (Riak, MongoDB, Neo4J).