Human Centered and Social Computing

Research in social computing seeks to reveal new understanding about properties that networks of people and computers together possess, with the goal of developing theoretical and practical understandings of systems that support socially intelligent computing, from design stages through to evaluation and refinement of real world applications.  What will the next generation of today’s social web leaders (e.g. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube) look like, and how will they behave?  How will new supporting technology (e.g. Mobile, Augmented Reality, Moore’s Law) better integrate social computing into our daily schedules?  How will this impact our security and privacy? By better characterizing, understanding, and eventually designing for desired behaviors arising from computationally mediated groups of people at all scales, new forms of knowledge creation, new models of computation, new forms of culture, and new types of interaction can result. Through careful research on these systems, including their emergent behaviors and desired properties, we can build theory to inform the design of future platforms for social communication and interaction, leading to a broad and beneficial impact on business and society.

Affilated Labs: 
Four Eyes Lab, NLP Lab


The 'bionic eye'—so long a dream of the future—is finally becoming a reality with retinal prostheses available in the US and Europe (Fig. 1; over 300 patients implanted). With cortical implants, optogenetic approaches, and stem cell therapy in development, a wide range of sight recovery (SR) options will be available to patients suffering from severe blindness.



