Over the last decade, as the HASS research profile has matured and expanded, so have the number of focused opportunities hosted by HASS for advanced scholarly activity including research centers, labs, and academic journals.  Developed and headed by HASSfaculty and supported by sponsored research awards or funding provided in part by Rensselaer, each of these initiatives expands faculty and graduate student academic opportunities and enhances the regard for The School of Humanities and Social Sciences as a locus of scholarly productivity.

The Department of Arts  

iEAR Studios  The studios and the program have historically been referred to as iEAR (Integrated Electronic Arts at Rensselaer). The studios provide specialized facilities for students, faculty and visiting artists to engage in individual and collaborative research projects.  The department also supports an ongoing series of public performances, lectures, and exhibitions, called iEAR Presents!. The series features the work of pioneering and emerging artists who explore the boundaries of electronic art. more

FELIX: A Journal of Media Arts and Communication, encouraging dialogue among radical media makers since 1991, is edited by Associate Professor and department head, Kathy High.  FELIX's most recent issue is a bilingual collaboration with Mexican and U.S. artists entitled RISK/RIESGO.   Upcoming issue is a collaboration with Sherry Miller Hocking and Mona Jimenez entitled "TOOLS: Analogues and Intersections: Video Art and New Media."  more         

 The Department of Cognitive Science

Cognitive Architecture (CogArch) Laboratory is focused on research developing comprehensive models of human cognition, that is, cognitive architectures. Research is ongoing into the fundamental interaction of implicit and explicit cognition, the interaction of motivation, metacognition, and cognition, consciousness and computation, as well as cognitive social simulation.  more

CogWorks Laboratory conducts basic and applied research to study the complex interplay of cognition, perception, and action in routine interactive behavior. To further our understanding of integrated cognitive systems we combine methods from experimental psychology, computational cognitive modeling, and cognitive engineering.  We define cognitive engineering as the application of cognitive science theory to human factors practice. more

Human-Level Intelligence Laboratory works from two hypotheses:  (1.) A relatively small set of mechanisms underlie human cognition and enable human-level intelligent systems in all domains, and  (2.) The key to implementing these mechanisms is to discover how the mind integrates cognitive and perceptual mechanisms currently best modeled using diverse, difficult-to-integrate algorithms and data structures. more

Perception and Action (PandA) Laboratory: Research in the PandA Labs is aimed at understanding intelligence by studying the tight linkage between perception and action.  Basic questions about visual perception and motor control and coordination are addressed by investigating routine and skilled perceptual-motor tasks, with a specific focus on visually guided actions.  Experimental research is conducted in real and virtual nvironments, and mathematical models are developed using tools from dynamical systems theory and artificial intelligence. more

Rensselaer Artificial Intelligence and Reasoning (RAIR) Lab: Research and development in the RAIR Lab ranges across a number of applied projects, as well as across many of the fundamental questions AI raises (e.g., Are we machines ourselves? If so, what sort of machines?). Everything is to a high degree unified by the fact that the formalisms, tools, techniques, systems, etc. that underlie the lab's R&D are invariably based on reasoning.  more

The Department of Economics

Structural Change and Economic Dynamics Journal Professor of Economics Faye Duchin is Co-Managing Editor, and Professor of Economics John Gowdy is an Associate Editor.  The Journal publishes articles about theoretical, applied and methodological aspects of structural change in economic systems. An important aim is to facilitate communication among research institutes and individual researchers who are actively engaged in the study of structural change. more

The Department of Language, Literature, and Communication

The Social and Behavioral Research Laboratory (SBRL) is a facility that houses applied and basic research in Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC), Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Psychology, Cognitive Science, Community Informatics, and Technology Studies. Faculty and graduate students from departments of Language, Literature, and Communication, Cognitive Science, Computer Science, Electronic Arts, Management, and Science and Technology Studies conduct cross-disciplinary studies in the social and behavioral impact of information technologies. more       

The Games Research Lab focuses on games-related Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), and on the use of computer and video games as a platform for research on human communication and social strategies and interaction. more                          

The Department of Science and Technology Studies

The Center for Cultural Design (CCD) research group seeks to expand and enhance design-focused research that has merged in the Department of Science and Technology Studies, the School of Architecture, and elsewhere at Rensselaer.  Cross-disciplinary inquiry and teaching on campus have already produced the program in Product Design and Innovation. Cultural design is analogous to environmental design in its potential for improving the relationship between technological change and the quality of life.  Cultural design not only strives to make technologies more appropriate for their social context, but also to make better use of culture itself as a resource for innovation. more  

The Journal of Cultural Anthropology  is edited by Associate Professors of Science & Technology Studies Kim Fortun and Michael Fortun.  The journal publishes ethnographic writing informed by a wide array of theoretical perspectives, innovative in form and content, and focused on both traditional and emerging topics. It also welcomes essays concerned with theoretical issues, with ethnographic methods and research design in historical perspective, and with ways cultural analysis can address broader public audiences and interests. more