He has developed systems that are deployed in commercial and governmental production environments worldwide, co-authored three books, published over 100 refereed publications, was the doctoral advisor for 23 students, was granted one international and ten U.S. patents, has received research support totaling in access of $7 million from a variety of governmental and industrial organizations, and frequently consults for industry, government, and key intellectual property litigation.

     In 1993, he was a recipient of the NSF National Young Investigator Award. Recently, Springer Science and Business Media designated his co-authored book entitled "Information Retrieval: Algorithms and Heuristics" with the "Top Selling Title" award. He is the recipient of the 2007 ASIS&T Research in Information Science Award and is a Fellow of the AAAS, ACM, and IEEE.

     He is presently on leave from IIT and serves as The Royden B. Davis, S.J., Chair for Interdisciplinary Studies at Georgetown University.