The tremendous growth in access to information can create a "fire hose" effect, in which information is useless without effective methods for distinguishing what is relevant from what is not. This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I from Cognitive Technologies, Inc. addresses the problem of search, especially Internet search, from a unique perspective as research agents that mediate between, and on behalf of, the user and more traditional information retrieval systems. The innovative features of the approach are as follows: it provides direct support for users in constructing and elaborating mental models of the research context that motivates the search behavior; leverages such context with fast, parallel inferential search that filters and organizes search results from traditional search engines; supports critical thinking as it bears on the research issues under investigation; and envisions research as a collaborative process in which the fruits of each researcher's labors may be published electronically as active knowledge structures that can inform and organize subsequent searches, and which can form the basis of improved understanding of the domain. Direct commercial applications of the proposed integration of intelligent agent (IA) technology with a technology for explicitly representing a user's mental model of a domain include information access and management on the Internet and in vertical markets; namely, preparing briefs for case or patent law; market analysis for traders and brokers; intelligence analysis; primary and continuing education; university-based research; and conducting and managing national research interests.
