UC Irvine, Intel partner on $12.5-million research center

UC Irvine is home to a new $12.5-million research center funded by chip makerIntel Corp., the company announced Tuesday.

The center, named the Intel Science and Technology Center for Social Computing, applies social science and the humanities to the design and analysis of digital information. The center opened on June 1.

“Technology is profoundly entangled with our everyday lives. As researchers, we can’t get a handle on what’s going on by looking at technical factors alone,” said UC Irvine professor Paul Dourish, who will co-lead the center. “We have to study them in concert with human, social and cultural aspects.”

Justin Rattner, Intel chief technology officer, announced the center publicly Tuesday in San Francisco.

UC Irvine is the research hub, with four other campuses participating. The university will receive $5 million over five years, with an additional $7.5 million being split among the participating universities.

Experts from those schools, which include Cornell University, Indiana University, the Georgia Institute of Technology and New York University, specialize in anthropology, media studies, digital humanities, philosophy and computer science, among other disciplines.

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This story was reported by Times Staff Writer Stephen Ceasar.