Professional Summary

The Homepage is currently under construction. This is a temporary page about me.

Welcome! I am a Research Fellow at the School of Computing Technologies, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. My research focuses on search systems and their evaluation, with particular attention to Information Retrieval.

During my Ph.D. under the guidance of Profs. J. Shane Culpepper and Falk Scholer, I focused on Query Performance Prediction (QPP). My thesis aimed to advance the understanding and evaluation of QPP. Currently, I am exploring how end-to-end search pipelines and user behavior analysis can improve system effectiveness and user experience. Beyond QPP, I utilize empirical experimentation, statistical analysis, and machine learning models to gain deeper insights into these areas.

My M.Sc. thesis at the Technion — Israel Institute of Technology, supervised by Prof. Oren Kurland, focused on enhancing QPP using reference queries.

Outside of academia, I enjoy hiking, biking, and spending quality time with my family and our dog, Quan. I also volunteer with Guide Dogs Victoria, where I have been both a puppy raiser and a temporary carer, supporting a cause close to my heart.

If you are interested in Information Retrieval or wish to collaborate on research, please feel free to reach out to me via email or social media. I am always happy to explore new opportunities for collaboration and knowledge exchange.

Education

PhD Information Retrieval

RMIT University

MSc Information Management Engineering

Technion - Israel Institute of Technology

BSc Industrial Engineering and Management

Technion - Israel Institute of Technology

Interests

Information Retrieval Search Systems (RAG, AI Overview) Artificial Intelligence Evaluation Data Science User Interaction
Featured Publications

A Comparative Analysis of Linguistic and Retrieval Diversity in LLM-Generated Search Queries.

LLMs can generate diverse queries, but their patterns differ from those observed in human behavior. LLM-generated queries may not always reflect real user intent.

Oleg Zendel
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RMIT-ADM+S at the SIGIR 2025 LiveRAG Challenge

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Kun Ran
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Applying Large Language Models to Interactive Information Retrieval: A Practical Exploration

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Johanne R Trippas
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Enhancing Human Annotation: Leveraging Large Language Models and Efficient Batch Processing

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Oleg Zendel
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Entropy-Based Query Performance Prediction for Neural Information Retrieval Systems

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Oleg Zendel
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Recent Publications
(2025). A Comparative Analysis of Linguistic and Retrieval Diversity in LLM-Generated Search Queries.. CIKM.
(2025). RMIT-ADM+S at the SIGIR 2025 LiveRAG Challenge. arXiv.
(2025). Applying Large Language Models to Interactive Information Retrieval: A Practical Exploration. Proceedings of the 2025 ACM SIGIR Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval.
(2024). Enhancing Human Annotation: Leveraging Large Language Models and Efficient Batch Processing. Proceedings of the 2024 ACM SIGIR Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval (CHIIR ’24).
DOI
(2023). Entropy-Based Query Performance Prediction for Neural Information Retrieval Systems. The QPP++ 2023: Query Performance Prediction and Its Evaluation in New Tasks Workshop (QPP++).
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