One fine afternoon, while I was scrolling through my emails, I received an email from Joanna regarding the acceptance of my SoBigData++ (SBD++) application. As soon as I accepted, I began searching for accommodations, flight bookings, etc. My host, Avishek Anand, had moved to Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). Although my SBD++ host institute was Leibniz University of Hannover (LUH), due to time constraints and the need for focused and effective discussion with Avishek, I decided to go directly to TU Delft. Originally, I planned to return to LUH after the 19th of December, but with a pressing deadline, I stayed in Delft until the 30th of December to maximize the time.

Joanna from SBD++ was incredibly supportive, not only assisting me with my numerous queries but also offering warm and consistent support. On my first day, I met Avishek, my mentor, at the city center of Delft. We roamed around the city and had a sumptuous lunch. Venky, a postdoctoral student working with Avishek, made my stay in Delft more comfortable. I am glad to have met him, and we have become very good friends. His assistance throughout my visit was invaluable.

During my time at TU Delft, I spent most of my time discussing new ideas, best practices, and various challenges. I am grateful to Avishek for arranging several meetings despite his busy work schedule. Together with Avishek, we planned an ir_explain library, which aims to combine all representative explanation approaches into a single Python library. We believe this will benefit the community and reduce barriers for newcomers who want to work on the explainability and interpretability of Information Retrieval (IR) Systems. We also worked on a problem of explaining complex ranking decisions for a query by approximating it with the close neighborhood of similar queries used during the training phase of neural ranking models.

This visit offered me numerous opportunities to grow. I learned about key best practices and state-of-the-art work in the field of IR. We discussed many problems, and we will have ongoing collaborations to solve them. Since our research focuses heavily on empirical aspects, I want to acknowledge the cluster support provided by the L3S Research Centre. The support was crucial in planning large-scale experiments. For our upcoming submission, we believe the cluster support will be very beneficial for conducting proper and rapid large-scale experiments to explain different ranking models across various collections.

Beyond work, we had some enjoyable moments exploring the Netherlands. On Christmas Day and Boxing Day, we roamed around different cities, including Leiden, Amsterdam, The Hague). I hope to return soon, and perhaps visit TU Delft again during the summer. One particularly memorable afternoon was spent at Avishek’s home. I met his family, enjoyed a delicious Chinese hotpot, and had fun playing card games. 
As I prepare to head home for the New Year, I reflect on a rewarding and enriching experience. What better way to end the year than spending time with family and friends during the holidays?