University of California, Irvine, will house a new $5 million research center funded by Intel Corp., the world’s largest chipmaker.
The Intel Science & Technology Center for Social Computing aims to link social sciences and the humanities to the design and analysis of digital information.
UCI informatics professor Paul Dourish will run the center with Scott Mainwaring, senior research scientist of Intel Labs, and UCI anthropology and law professor Bill Maurer.
Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner made the announcement Tuesday in San Francisco.
Intel researchers will work alongside UCI academics in campus labs. The research will not be not proprietary, but rather public, open intellectual property.
UCI will serve as the center’s hub, with regional outposts at Cornell University, Indiana University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and New York University.
The center will lean on experts from a variety of fields, including anthropology, media studies, digital humanities, philosophy and computer science who will collaborate on numerous projects, from virtual seminars to product prototypes.
UCI will receive $5 million over a five-year period, with another $7.5 million split among the other universities.
The grant is part of Intel’s $100 million program to increase university research and accelerate innovation.
