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Caltech
The Linde Institute

Technology is now an inseparable part of modern society. The interplay of computational, economic, and social systems is central to strategic decisions by individuals, firms, and organizations. This interconnection influences the design and analysis of markets and non-market exchange mechanisms, and it also impacts how our information infrastructure evolves. In the Center for Social Information Sciences (CSIS) (formerly known as the Social and Information Sciences Laboratory (SISL)), researchers study the consequences of these interactions between economics and computer science and train the next generation to reason about this interface.

With faculty from Caltech's Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) working in tandem with colleagues in computation and neural systems (CNS) and computing and mathematical sciences (CMS), CSIS fosters a truly interdisciplinary environment to study how markets and other social systems function in a world in which economics can no longer be separated from the information and communication systems around us. CSIS faculty have published important and influential research in a variety of areas at the boundary of economics, computation, and engineering on topics such as privacy, electricity markets, and social networks.