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A list of all the posts and pages found on the site. For you robots out there is an XML version available for digesting as well.
Pages
Posts
portfolio
publications
Balanced Face Dataset: Guiding StyleGAN to Generate Labeled Synthetic Face Image Dataset for Underrepresented Group
Published in arXiv, 2023
An arXiv preprint on guiding StyleGAN to generate labeled synthetic face datasets for underrepresented groups.
Recommended citation: Mekonnen, K. A. (2023). "Balanced Face Dataset: Guiding StyleGAN to Generate Labeled Synthetic Face Image Dataset for Underrepresented Group." arXiv preprint.
📚 arXiv
Adv-KD: Adversarial Knowledge Distillation for Faster Diffusion Sampling
Published in arXiv, 2024
An arXiv preprint on adversarial knowledge distillation for faster diffusion sampling.
Recommended citation: Mekonnen, K. A., Dall'Asen, N., and Rota, P. (2024). "Adv-KD: Adversarial Knowledge Distillation for Faster Diffusion Sampling." arXiv preprint.
📚 arXiv
Conditioning GAN Without Training Dataset
Published in arXiv, 2024
An arXiv preprint on conditioning GANs without a training dataset.
Recommended citation: Mekonnen, K. A. (2024). "Conditioning GAN Without Training Dataset." arXiv preprint.
📚 arXiv
Lightweight and Direct Document Relevance Optimization for Generative Information Retrieval
Published in SIGIR 2025, 2025
A SIGIR 2025 full paper on lightweight document relevance optimization for generative information retrieval.
Recommended citation: Mekonnen, K. A., et al. (2025). "Lightweight and Direct Document Relevance Optimization for Generative Information Retrieval." Proceedings of SIGIR 2025.
📄 Paper · 
Slides
Optimized Text Embedding Models and Benchmarks for Amharic Passage Retrieval
Published in ACL Findings 2025, 2025
An ACL Findings 2025 paper on text embedding models and benchmarks for Amharic passage retrieval.
Recommended citation: Mekonnen, K. A., et al. (2025). "Optimized Text Embedding Models and Benchmarks for Amharic Passage Retrieval." Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics.
📄 Anthology · 🔗 DOI · ⬇️ PDF · 🖼️ Poster
The Multilingual Curse at the Retrieval Layer: Evidence from Amharic
Published in ACL MeLLM 2026, 2026
An ACL MeLLM 2026 workshop paper on retrieval-layer failures in multilingual systems, with evidence from Amharic.
Recommended citation: Alemneh, Y. W.*, Mekonnen, K. A.*, and de Rijke, M. (2026). "The Multilingual Curse at the Retrieval Layer: Evidence from Amharic." The 1st Workshop on Multilinguality in the Era of Large Language Models, ACL 2026. *Equal contribution.
📄 Anthology · 🔗 DOI · ⬇️ PDF · 🖼️ Poster
uva-irlab-conv at SemEval-2026 Task 8: Multi-Turn RAG with Learned Sparse Retrieval and Listwise Reranking
Published in SemEval 2026, 2026
A SemEval 2026 system paper on multi-turn RAG with learned sparse retrieval and listwise reranking.
Recommended citation: Lupart, S., Mekonnen, K., Abbasiantaeb, Z., and Aliannejadi, M. (2026). "uva-irlab-conv at SemEval-2026 Task 8: Multi-Turn RAG with Learned Sparse Retrieval and Listwise Reranking." Proceedings of the 20th International Workshop on Semantic Evaluation, 2972–2980.
📄 Anthology · 🔗 DOI · ⬇️ PDF
Lost in Decoding? Reproducing and Stress-Testing the Look-Ahead Prior in Generative Retrieval
Published in SIGIR 2026 Reproducibility Track, 2026
A SIGIR 2026 Reproducibility Track paper stress-testing the look-ahead prior in generative retrieval.
Recommended citation: Mekonnen, K. A., et al. (2026). "Lost in Decoding? Reproducing and Stress-Testing the Look-Ahead Prior in Generative Retrieval." Proceedings of SIGIR 2026.
📄 Paper · Slides
A Parametric Memory Head for Continual Generative Retrieval
Published in SIGIR 2026, 2026
A SIGIR 2026 full paper on continual generative retrieval with parametric memory.
Recommended citation: Mekonnen, K. A., et al. (2026). "A Parametric Memory Head for Continual Generative Retrieval." Proceedings of SIGIR 2026.
📄 Paper · Slides
talks
teaching
Recommender Systems
Teaching assistant, University of Amsterdam, MSc Artificial Intelligence, 2025
Teaching assistant for the MSc Artificial Intelligence Recommender Systems course. Developed and delivered a lecture on generative approaches to recommender systems, including semantic identifiers and generative recommendation.
Information Retrieval 0
Teaching assistant, University of Amsterdam, BSc Artificial Intelligence, 2025
Teaching assistant for the Information Retrieval 0 course. Supported lab sessions, assignment preparation, project feedback, grading, and exam assessment for an undergraduate information retrieval course.
Academic Service
Service, Information retrieval, machine learning, and NLP communities, 2026
Reviewer for major information retrieval and machine learning venues, including NeurIPS 2026, SIGIR 2026 across multiple tracks, and ECIR 2025. Served as a Low Resource Environments Shepherd at SIGIR 2026 and received ECIR best reviewer recognition.
BSc Thesis Supervision
Thesis supervision, University of Amsterdam, 2026
Supervising a BSc thesis project on multilingual search for low-resource languages, with a focus on multilingual retrieval evaluation, query translation, dense retrieval, and error analysis.
Recommender Systems
Teaching assistant, University of Amsterdam, MSc Artificial Intelligence, 2026
Teaching assistant for the MSc Artificial Intelligence Recommender Systems course. Developed and delivered lectures on generative recommendation and practical use of SURF Snellius for course experiments. Supported student projects, reproducibility assignments, and assessments.