  These lecture notes focus on the recent advancements in neural information
retrieval, with particular emphasis on the systems and models exploiting
transformer networks. These networks, originally proposed by Google in 2017,
have seen a large success in many natural language processing and information
retrieval tasks. While there are many fantastic textbook on information
retrieval and natural language processing as well as specialised books for a
more advanced audience, these lecture notes target people aiming at developing
a basic understanding of the main information retrieval techniques and
approaches based on deep learning. These notes have been prepared for a IR
graduate course of the MSc program in Artificial Intelligence and Data
Engineering at the University of Pisa, Italy.
