Since anyone in the world can edit articles on Wikipedia, one of the most visited sites on the web, how do we know how to trust its content? One CITRIS researcher has a method.
From the outset, CITRIS involvement has been instrumental in helping to shape academic excellence at UC Merced. This influence is the innovative open source teaching and learning system developed by the School of Engineering at UC Merced, known as the Open Source Collaboratory. The Collaboratory represents an effort to provide an effective, relevant, and flexible environment for educating the next generation of computer literate and technologically confident college graduates.
The Collaboratory is a model for educational computing environments of the future:
Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) is a rapidly growing interdisciplinary field that encompasses applications (science/engineering), applied mathematics, numerical analysis, and computer science and engineering in which high performance computing, large-scale simulation, and scientific applications play a central role.
Transforming an information surplus into an information success is the aim of knowledge science, and doing so in the burgeoning area of knowledge services is the focus of UC Santa Cruz: Knowledge Services and Enterprise Management (KSEM). This CITRIS-supported program is offered by UCSC’s Baskin School of Engineering at its Silicon Valley Center through the UC Santa Cruz Extension.
At the UC Berkeley campus, CITRIS, in conjunction with the Haas School of Business, the School of Information,
and the College
of Engineering, helped to
launch a joint program in Services:
Science, Management, and Engineering (SSME).
The SSME program aims to give business, engineering and information
The Information and Service Design (ISD) Program at the UC Berkeley School of Information works to develop a coherent framework for the study of service. Information exchange and collaboration are at the heart of service, whether they are taking place through person-to-person, person-to-machine, or machine-to-machine interactions. The ISD Program explores increasingly global and interconnected developments in business, law, computing, communications, research, and education. It advances the study of service by leveraging School of Information’s distinctive competencies in:
Game-based learning is a promising new approach to education that combines information technology with advances in new media. Researchers at Berkeley’s Center for New Media, led by Professor Ken Goldberg, are uniquely positioned to investigate the ways that electronic games will change social and individual learning experiences. Electronic games engage players in fictitious scenarios where they learn to respond to complex stimuli with sophisticated behaviors and strategies.
Wikipedia has become an invaluable source of information to millions of households and to schools and workplaces nationwide—indeed, worldwide. In many ways, a “Wikipedia search” is becoming synonymous with information search, in the same way in which a “Google search” is for the Web.
Electronic data exists in all places, in different formats, in different locations, and in increasing volumes. The need to integrate information from different data sources is crucial to almost every modern enterprise since integrated information often presents new information. However, integrating information is not an easy task, and it is one of the most time-consuming data management problems.
Embedded computers and networks are being used more and more pervasively to monitor and control physical processes in feedback loops where physical processes affect computations and vice versa. The Center for Hybrid and Embedded Software Systems (CHESS) is building foundational theories and practical tools for these systems in ways that combine computation, networking, and physical dynamics. The economic and societal potential of such systems are great, and major investments are being made worldwide to develop this technology.
Wireless information technologies are providing new ways to communicate and are one of several information and communication technologies touted as an opportunity to reduce society’s overall environmental impacts. CITRIS researchers have been measuring the environmental effects of applications of wireless technologies and comparing them to those of conventional technologies for which they can be substituted.
CITRIS researchers are developing new techniques and algorithms to provide real-time geometric manufacturability feedback to designers as they work. These “Design for Manufacturing” (DFM) services will allow designers to compress design cycles, reduce time to market, and lower costs through greater realization of concurrent engineering.
Flexibility and optimization at all levels are the ultimate
goals in service systems design and management.
In designing a supply chain, firms are often faced with the competing
demands of improved customer service and reduced cost. CITRIS researcher Max
Shen has developed a model that incorporates supply chain-related costs while
ensuring that certain service requirements are satisfied. His results suggest
that significant service improvements can be achieved relative to the minimum
cost solution at a relatively incremental cost.
CITRIS researchers at UC Santa Cruz are studying resource allocation policies in a service environment. This work combines statistics, simulation, and optimization models with the objective of developing best-practice scheduling and pricing rules for use in management and technology development. Technology and Information Management Professor Kevin Ross is applying this research to workforce scheduling for call centers and air traffic flow management for the national airspace.
Innovation in services is not the same as innovation in products—services are intangible, usually consumed when delivered, and the customer can co-create experience with supplier. Products are tangible, last longer, and are usually created by the manufacturer alone. Information is not only key input in services production, but also the key output as well. Interestingly, more than 70 percent of technology spending is by services businesses, which tend to be at the leading-edge industries in adopting new technology.
The application of rule-based IT tools to service activities is literally transforming the services component of the economy. Service activities themselves are changed when the activities can be converted into formalizable, codifiable, computable processes—processes with clearly defined rules for their execution. The activities are changed when the information on which they rest can be developed, manipulated, and elaborated by these digital tools. Much of the innovation in services then is around the adoption and effective implementation of IT tools.
Message from Acting Director Paul Wright
Transforming an information glut into an information goldmine is the aim of
knowledge science at UCSC. by Gordy Slack
Nailing Down the Who, What, When, Where, and Who Else: The Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative. by Gordy Slack
It's new. It's hot. It's UC Merced. Find out why faculty, students, and
industry partners are flocking to the University of California's latest
member.
A unique collaboration between Berkeley students led by a CITRIS
researcher and the Chicago Fire Department is bringing critical
information to firefighters when they most need it.
A new CITRIS-sponsored study reveals that making rich digital resources available to college educators is only half the battle.
