Research

CivicWatch: Helping Researchers Understand How Public Officials Communicate Online

A research project led by PhD Students Andrew Aquilina and Quinn Wolter as well as Professor Yu-Ru Lin was featured on the Bright Initiative, a global Data-for-Good program founded by Bright Data.
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Helping Everyday People to Understand Data: SCI research team gets paper published in Library Trends

In a collaboration between six researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, three of which come from the School of Computing and Information, a paper reflecting ten years of work was published just this year.
Pictured from left to right, clockwise: Rebecca Morris, Frances Corry, Aakash Gautam, and Nora Mattern

Serving Communities Through Information: SCI Faculty Members Receive Three IMLS Grants

Four SCI faculty members—Frances Corry, Aakash Gautam, Eleanor Mattern, and Rebecca Morris—were awarded Institute of Museum and Library Service (IMLS) grants. Established in 1996, the IMLS supports libraries, archives, and museums in all 50 states and U.S. territories.

Recent PhD Graduate, SCI Professor Receive Best Paper Award at EDM 2026

Recent PhD Graduate Deniz Sonmez-Unal and SCI Professor Erin Walker received the best paper award at the 2026 Educational Data Mining Conference (EDM) for their paper “Leveraging Privileged Multimodal Data to Model Cognitive States in an Interactive Learning Platform.”
large presentation slide displaying an image of a syrup bottle with the side reading "Best Poster; "How Women'a Empowerment Combats National Brain Drain;" Alireza Javadian Sabet."

Recent PhD Graduate Receives Best Poster Award at IC2S2 2026

Recent PhD Graduate Alireza Javadian Sabet (SCI ‘26G) received the Best Poster Award at the 12th International Conference on Computational Social Science (IC2S2) held in Burlington, Vermont, for his paper "How women's empowerment combats national brain drain."
a woman wearing sunglasses stands next to two signs. The top sign reads "Santa Fe Institute." The bottom sign reads "The Murray Gell-Mann Building."

Ahana Biswas Represents SCI at Selective Santa Fe Institute Graduate Workshop

Ahana Biswas, a fourth-year Ph.D. student in information science at SCI and researcher in the PICSO Lab, attended the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) Graduate Workshop in Computational Social Science from May 24 through June 5, 2026. A highly selective and prestigious program, the workshop brings together a small cohort of graduate students from leading institutions to collaborate on interdisciplinary research.

A Pitt-led team plans to automate quantum computing research with a Department of Energy grant

A new University of Pittsburgh-led research project aims to automate the scientific process, using a team of AI agents to harness a promising new type of quantum computing that could enable discoveries in chemistry and materials science.
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Beyond The Lab: SCI Hosts Cornell's David Rand

Dr. David Rand of Cornell University visited SCI graduate students in Spring 2026 to talk about the relationship between AI systems and human reasoning.

New Open-Access Article: Can AI Provenance Inform Archival Provenance?

What can archives learn from AI? A new open-access article by Frances Corry, Assistant Professor in SCI’s Department of Information Culture and Data Stewardship, argues the answer is: quite a lot.
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Surreality Lab Featured at AWE USA 2026

The University of Pittsburgh Surreality Lab was featured in two sessions at AWE USA 2026, one of the leading conferences for extended reality and artificial intelligence, where its mixed reality surgical guidance work was presented to an audience of industry and academic leaders.

Multiple SCI and ISP Faculty Members Rank Among Top U.S. and World CS Scientists in 2026, According to Research.com

Fourteen SCI faculty members and six Intelligent Systems Program (ISP) faculty members ranked among Research.com’s 12th Edition of Best Computer Scientists in the U.S. and World’s Best Computer Scientists.

Pitt’s Collaboration with Dell Technologies, NVIDIA brings innovative AI tech to campus researchers

A collaboration between the University of Pittsburgh, Dell Technologies, and NVIDIA is bringing innovative tech to campus, connecting Pitt’s research with industry leaders. As part of Dell's Partner Advisory Board, Pitt was invited to try new AI hardware and explore various research endeavors.
Balaji Palanisamy

SCI Associate Professor Balaji Palanisamy Receives Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award

Supported by the Iceland-U.S. Fulbright Commission, the prestigious award permits Dr. Palanisamy to visit Reykjavik University in Iceland, where he will conduct a 5-month long research project on detecting security vulnerabilities in Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Platforms.

SCI assistant professor earns NSF grant for interdisciplinary research project

Junyu Liu, an assistant professor for the Department of Computer Science, was recently awarded an NSF grant for his research collaboration with the professors from the Pitt Swanson School of Engineering. They are using their awarded NSF grant to support their research project, titled “Simulating fluid dynamics using hybrid quantum-classical devices.”

SCI undergraduate researcher accepted into competitive international ACM Student Research Competition  

In her last semester at Pitt, Michelle Star (SCI ’26) had her human-computer interaction (HCI) research paper accepted into the highly competitive Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Student Research Competition. Star was one of only six international undergraduate students to get their research paper accepted.