Research

Within Information Science, our faculty and students combine curiosity, ingenuity and passion to design, to solve, to question, to build and to innovate. Our research interests vary widely across the tech spectrum, from designing mobile health tools of tomorrow and developing fabrication systems that blend 3D printing and virtual reality, to text mining for gender bias with natural language processing tools and facilitating team conflicts with robots.

Please see below to learn more about our research areas, affiliated faculty, and corresponding labs/groups.

Research Areas

Computational Social Science

Growing use of the Internet and social media in the past decade has led to an explosion in the amount of social and behavioral data available to researchers.

Critical Data Studies

Cornell scholars in critical-data studies examine the impacts of big data and algorithmic tools on culture, society, policy, law, and more.

Data Science

While their specific areas of research and inquiry vary, data scientists at Cornell share in a similar aim: to leverage computational methods to inform and improve society.

Economics and Information

Information Science-affiliated researchers within Economics and Information exhibit interdisciplinary knowledge of algorithms, networks, mathematics and more.

Education Technology

Info Sci faculty within the Education Technology research area specialize in the design, development and evaluation of information technologies for education.

Ethics, Law and Policy

Cornell researchers in Ethics, Law and Policy explore how to govern emerging technologies, examine how tech challenges existing legal and policy frameworks, and how to mediate their risks while reaping their benefits.

Human-Computer Interaction

The Human-Computer Interaction research area brings together a diverse core of Cornell designers, builders and investigators who help further our understanding of interactive technologies and their uses.

Human-Robot Interaction

The Human-Robot Interaction research area is comprised of Info Sci faculty and field faculty members who investigate ways robots can better our lives, whether by direct companionship and collaboration or improving team settings.

Incentives and Computation

How do incentives guide or shape our online behavior? Cornell researchers in the Incentives and Computation area explore these questions and more.

Infrastructure Studies

Infrastructure Studies investigates technology's place in our culture, evaluating how we use and consider evolving technology.

Interface Design and Ubiquitous Computing

Interface Design and Ubiquitous Computing looks at how to design technology that fits people, examines the differences in individuals, environments and contexts and enables technology to help people in making them more healthy, connected, and productive.

Natural Language Processing

Cornell researchers in NLP are interested in computational models of human language and machine learning, applying a computational lens to a broad set of projects in the areas of linguistic analysis, natural language understanding systems, social science, and humanities.

Network Science

Once again highlighting the interdisciplinary nature of research areas within Information Science, Network Science houses Cornell computer and information scientists whose interests extend into sociology, economics, applied mathematics, and more.

Social Computing and Computer-supported Cooperative Work

In the broadest sense, Social Computing and Computer-supported Cooperative Work research area looks at how to make technology more human-centered. Bridging diverse areas like human-computer interaction, design, crowdsourcing, natural language processing and much

Technology and Equity

As technology increasingly reshapes and directs our world, questions of fairness and equity become critical areas of inquiry – How biased is the data that feeds the algorithm to decide whether or not you are eligible for a home loan?