CRCS Harvard's Center for Research on Computation and Society

Harvard’s Center for Research on Computation and Society (CRCS) brings computer scientists together with a broad range of scholars from other fields to tackle fundamental computational problems arising from societal issues, such as privacy, security, and crowdsourcing.

Since Fall 2009, CRCS has joined forces with Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.  In particular, we have integrated our fellowship programs and coordinated our respective seminars to foster collaboration.  CRCS hosts a biweekly seminar for both communities from 12:00 – 1:30pm on Mondays in Maxwell Dworkin 119. CRCS fellows, faculty and friends are also encouraged to  participate in the weekly Berkman lunches, held each Tuesday from 12:30 – 2pm.

Since Fall 2012, CRCS faculty member Salil Vadhan has been leading the Privacy Tools for Sharing Research Data project, a multi-school, cross-departmental effort supported by the National Science Foundation’s Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program.

News

February 4, 2013: The application for the 2013-2014 CRCS Postdoctoral Fellowships is closed.

October 15, 2012: CRCS is soliciting applications for its Postdoctoral Fellows and Visiting Scholars Programs for the 2013-2014 academic years. The application deadline is December 16, 2012. Please check here for more information on the programs and the procedure to apply.

September 26, 2012: A $5m NSF grant on “Privacy Tools for Sharing Research Data” has been awarded to CRCS, the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, and the Berkman Center.  The project is a broad, multidisciplinary effort to help enable the collection, analysis, and sharing of personal data for research in social science and other fields while providing privacy for individual subjects.  See the project webpage for more information.

September 1, 2012: Edith Law joins CRCS as the newest postdoctoral fellow. She graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 2012 with a Ph.D. in Machine Learning, where she worked with Luis von Ahn and Tom Mitchell on designing human computation systems that harness the joint efforts of machines and humans.  Her current research focus is on designing human computation systems that scientists can use to engage the crowd to help answer specific research questions.

September 1, 2012: Kobbi Nissim joins CRCS as a Visiting Scholar for his sabbatical from Ben-Gurion University in Israel.  Kobbi is one of the inventors of differential privacy, and the CRCS community will be greatly enriched by his expertise in privacy, cryptography, and other areas of theoretical computer science.