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Opportunity Summary:

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Social Computational Systems (SoCS) program is a research grant opportunity focused on understanding and intentionally designing systems where people and computers work together as a combined, computationally mediated whole. The central idea is that when humans and machines interact at scale, from a single user paired with a computer to massive Internet-scale networks of people and devices, the overall system can display distinctive properties that neither humans nor computers exhibit alone. NSF is looking to fund projects that uncover how these hybrid systems behave, what new capabilities they can enable, what unexpected side effects may emerge, and what fundamental limits exist when computation is intertwined with human cognition and social dynamics.

SoCS emphasizes “socially intelligent computing,” meaning computing that is shaped by, learns from, and effectively collaborates with human social behavior and intelligence. The program encourages researchers to better characterize and model group behaviors that arise through computational platforms, including emergent behaviors (patterns that arise from many individual interactions), new “affordances” (new things people can do because of the system’s design), and new forms of knowledge creation and cultural production that become possible when human participation is built into the computational process. A key goal is moving beyond simply observing these effects toward developing theory and practical design principles for creating systems that reliably promote desired outcomes, while also identifying risks, tradeoffs, and boundaries on what such systems can achieve.

A major feature of this opportunity is its explicit push for interdisciplinary collaboration. NSF notes that computer scientists often study computational power, efficiency, and correctness without fully integrating how real people use and shape systems, while social and behavioral scientists may study technology’s effects on people without those findings strongly influencing how new computational systems are engineered. SoCS aims to bridge that gap by supporting proposals that combine computational approaches (such as algorithms, complexity theory, data-driven modeling, and systems design) with human-centered approaches (including behavioral science, cognitive science, social science, and other methods that explain how people think, coordinate, and participate). Proposals that truly integrate these perspectives, rather than placing them side-by-side, are especially encouraged.

In terms of the kinds of research directions SoCS is trying to stimulate, the program highlights several themes: designing systems that explicitly incorporate knowledge of human cognitive and social abilities; creating new models of collective, social, and participatory computing; and developing algorithms that can leverage contributions from very large numbers of people (for example, by combining human judgment, attention, or creativity with machine computation). At the same time, the program is interested in fundamental understanding, including theoretical models that explain what is possible or impossible in these human-computer partnerships and why, drawing on disciplines that range from computational complexity theory to the behavioral sciences.

Administrative details from the announcement indicate this is a discretionary NSF grant program in the Science and Technology and other Research and Development category. The funding opportunity number is 10-600, and it is associated with CFDA numbers 47.070 (Computer and Information Science and Engineering) and 47.075 (Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences), reinforcing its cross-disciplinary intent. NSF anticipated making around 20 awards with an estimated total program funding level of $10,000,000, and a stated award ceiling of $750,000. There is no cost sharing or matching requirement. Eligibility is listed as unrestricted (open broadly to applicant types, subject to any clarifications in the full announcement). Key deadlines listed include a full proposal deadline of November 23, 2010, and another full proposal deadline of November 11, 2011, with the current closing date shown as November 11, 2011. The additional information link is identified as NSF Publication 10-600, and technical help for accessing the announcement is routed through NSF grants.gov support.

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