About CSSI
The UMass Computational Social Science Institute (CSSI) is a diverse interdisciplinary community of faculty who use computational models and methods to understand the social world. The Institute promotes dialog and collaboration across more than 80 faculty affiliates from over 20 departments in nine colleges at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
The Institute originated in 2010 as an interdisciplinary initiative to hire a cluster of four new faculty in political science, sociology, statistics, and computer science. The initiative continued supporting departments in hiring experts within this rapidly growing interdisciplinary field and nurtured a cross-college community with a regular seminar and other shared events. In 2016, the Faculty Senate approved a proposal to recognize the successful activities of the initiative and create a more permanent institute.
CSSI catalyzes and promotes cross-college research collaborations, grant proposals, and other related activities. It focuses on bringing together faculty from different disciplines whose research activities align but who otherwise might not collaborate. CSSI’s priority is bringing together faculty working in the area of computational social science to create new research projects, rather than directly funding research or administering research funds. Thus, it complements existing research organizations and efforts within UMass departments and colleges.
Related Organizations at UMass
UMass Amherst is a vibrant center for the computational social sciences. This webpage is hosted by CSSI, which focuses on fostering research and engagement between units on campus, primarily through events and disseminating information. As an institute, it is organized as a joint effort across multiple colleges.
CSSI often collaborates with related organizations at UMass Amherst that also serve the CSS community, including (but not limited to) ones below, listed alphabetically. Many CSSI faculty affiliates have participated in their programs.
Center for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (CDSAI)
CDSAI (formerly CDS) is housed within the College of Information and Computer Sciences. CDSAI fosters research, education, industry collaboration, and public service, facilitating collaboration among academic, industry, and non-profit partners, in multiple domains, including CSS. CDSAI offers a number of resources that are often of interest to CSS faculty and students, such as seed funding, research staff support, compute resources, a summer student program, and an AI research accelerator program.
Center for Research on Families (CRF)
The CRF promotes interdisciplinary family research across the social, behavioral, and natural sciences to address pressing social problems and systemic inequalities through family research and community engagement programming.
Data Analytics and Computational Social Science (DACSS) M.S. Program
DACSS is an educational unit, whose primary focus is an M.S. degree program. It is located in the School of Public Policy, in the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences. (Of the units on this webpage, it is the only one that offers a degree and courses.) DACSS’s offerings cover many areas of CSS, available both to their own masters students, as well as students from other departments across campus. PhD students from the social sciences, computational sciences, health sciences, and humanities have found their courses useful for CSS training. They also offer a DACSS graduate certificate and a new BS certificate.
Institute for Diversity Sciences (IDS)
IDS connects STEM to social justice by breaking down knowledge silos and connecting faculty and students across disciplines to solve real-world problems through research, education, and professional development. IDS programs sometimes examine CSS topics, including through CSSI and IDS joint seminars on computational diversity sciences.
Institute for Social Science Research (ISSR)
ISSR supports social science research (both computational and otherwise), providing resources and support for campus-wide researchers using or learning to use social science methods, seeking to take part in collaborative and interdisciplinary research, doing publicly engaged research, and seeking external funding for research. ISSR runs workshops and programs that are often of interest to CSS scholars, and also helps administer grant-funded research. ISSR is housed within the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences (SBS).
Public Interest Technology Initiative (PIT)
PIT focuses on the development and realization of socially responsible solutions to the challenges of a technology-driven world; many of their projects concern questions of how best to apply computational technology within society; computational social science typically has a related focus on applying computational methods to study society. PIT’s faculty fellow and student programs may be of interest to CSS scholars.
