Justin Zobel
Justin Zobel researches efficient web search and information retrieval. He completed his PhD in computer science at Melbourne in 1991, led RMIT’s Search Engine group, and returned to Melbourne in 2008. With Timothy Bell, Alistair Moffat and Ian Witten, he coauthored the 1995 MG retrieval paper; in 2015, he led Melbourne’s Department of Computing and Information Systems. CORE honored his service in 2017, and he joined the SIGIR Academy in 2022. As of October 2026, he is Pro Vice-Chancellor (Graduate & International Research) at Melbourne, where his research includes search algorithms, data structures and measurement.
- Now at
- University of Melbourne
- Works
- 398
- Citations
- 18,673
- h-index
- 61
Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 15 October 2026.
Timeline
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1991–2008
From Melbourne to RMIT
He completes his PhD in computer science at Melbourne in 1991, leads RMIT’s Search Engine group, and returns to Melbourne in 2008.
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1995
The MG retrieval system
With Timothy Bell, Alistair Moffat and Ian Witten, he coauthors the 1995 paper “The MG retrieval system: compressing for space and speed,” about compression and indexing for large-scale full-text retrieval.
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2015
Head of Computing and Information Systems
In 2015, he is Head of the Department of Computing and Information Systems at Melbourne and welcomes university ICT leaders to campus.
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2017
A CORE service award
He and Katrina Falkner receive CORE’s John Hughes Distinguished Service Award in 2017.
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2022
The SIGIR Academy
He joins the 2022 class of the ACM SIGIR Academy, which recognizes cumulative contributions to information retrieval research or service.
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As of October 2026
Pro Vice-Chancellor at Melbourne
As of October 2026, he is Pro Vice-Chancellor (Graduate & International Research) at the University of Melbourne. His research areas include algorithms for efficient web search, data structures and measurement.
Sources and credits
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