The Information Retrieval Group at the Faculty of Informatics of the Università della Svizzera italiana was established in 2007, when Crestani and Landoni moved to Lugano from Glasgow. The group has naturally gone through different phases and grown at some point to be more than 10 people in size. The current group members are listed in people.

The group is engaged in research in different areas of Information Retrieval, Digital Libraries and Text Mining, reflecting the interest of the group members. Research is currently funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Hasler Stiftung and the European Commission, among others. Members of the group have a long experience in participating in research projects.

The group has a strong national and international collaborations with the several universities in UK, Italy, Spain, USA and Malaysia.