UCSB Natural Language Processing Group
The UC Santa Barbara Natural Language Processing Group studies the theoretical foundation and practical algorithms for language technologies. It tackles challenging learning and reasoning problems under uncertainty, and pursue answers via studies of machine learning, deep learning, and interdisciplinary data science. The lab concentrates in the areas of information extraction, computational social science, knowledge graph, learning to reason, dialogue systems, language & vision, summarization, statistical relational learning, reinforcement learning, structure learning, and deep learning.
Broom Center for Demography
The Leonard and Gretchan Broom Center for Demography facilitates and engages in research and training in social demography and population studies, with particular emphasis on social and economic inequalities and health disparities. Key issues explored by Center Associates include inequalities across social groups defined by gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity, and immigration status; population-environment interactions; the determinants of population health; migration flows; spatial demography; and the allocation of resources within and among families, workplaces, schools, and other social institutions.
Center For Information and Technology
The Center For Information and Technology (CITS) is dedicated to research and education about the cultural transitions and social innovations associated with technology, particularly in the highly dynamic environments that seem so pervasive in organizations and societies today. It also works to improve engineering through infusing social insights into the innovative process. Faculty associated with the Center bring their diverse disciplinary perspectives—which range from Art and English to Sociology and Communication to Computer Science and Electrical Engineering—into conversation, forwarding cutting edge research across the engineering sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. Affiliated faculty have, naturally, pursued research to assess the impact of big data and analytical techniques on the way people live and work.
Digital Humanities
The WhatEvery1Says project (WE1S) uses digital humanities methods to study media discourse about the humanities at large data scales. The project concentrates on, but is not limited to, journalistic articles in the U.S. available in digital textual form beginning circa 1981. Other materials include social media.
Our hypothesis is that digital methods can help us learn new things about how the humanities have been portrayed in public discourse.... Instead of concentrating on set debates and well-worn arguments, can we exploit new ideas or surprising commonalities to better grasp the role of the humanities in the 21st century?
Responsible Machine Learning
Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing our world. The Center for Responsible Machine Learning reflects UC Santa Barbara's commitment to advancing cutting-edge research in AI, machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision, with an emphasis on the societal impacts of these rapidly evolving technologies. We are particularly interested in addressing issues of fairness, bias, privacy, transparency, explainability, and accountability in the context of AI algorithms, and in understanding the wide range of ethical, policy, legal, and even energy-efficiency issues associated with machine-learning models. We envision the center becoming an indispensable locus of innovation, where bold leaders produce visionary software and revolutionary techniques that powerfully serve the greater good.