Since the field of computer science emerged at CMU, we’ve focused on making things that go into the world and change it for the better.
Our founders defined the term computer science in the 1960s. We created multiprocessor systems and speech recognition technologies, developed the first university wired and wireless networks, and pioneered autonomous driving and search engines.
SCS research institutes and centers play a key role in convening interdisciplinary talent across our academic departments, government and industry to develop technology that will impact generations to come.
Funded at the federal level, these research institutes are an important part of our nation’s efforts to scale AI research and development and sustain technical leadership in AI.
NREC works closely with government and industry clients to develop and mature robotic technologies from concept to commercialization. A typical project includes a rapid proof-of-concept demonstration followed by in-depth development and testing that produces a robust prototype with IP for licensing and commercialization.
CMU research consortia bring together experts from across academic disciplines and industry to collaborate on research with large-scale impact.
CyLab is the university-wide security and privacy institute at CMU. Their mission is to catalyze, support, promote and strengthen collaborative security and privacy research and education to achieve significant impact on research, education, public policy and practice.
The Parallel Data Lab at CMU is academia’s premier data systems research center. Its 50+ researchers address a broad spectrum of data infrastructure challenges and opportunities, including scalability, efficiency, data reliability, emerging technologies, heterogeneity in systems, cloud computing, data lakes, and the intersection of ML and systems.
The Carnegie Mellon Database Group is a leading research collective that focuses on database systems, data management and data-intensive computing.
The CMU Database Group’s Industry Affiliates Program (IAP) fosters dynamic partnerships between academia and database practitioners at early stage companies. As a hub for groundbreaking advancements in database systems, CMU-DB IAP has cultivated a unique ecosystem that brings together leading researchers, forward-thinking students and industry pioneers.
CMU and Keio University joined forces with one another and with industry partners, including SoftBank Group, Arm and Microsoft, to accelerate the global advancement of AI and boost workforce development in the United States and Japan. Research themes include multimodal and multi-lingual learning, AI for robots, autonomous AI symbiosis with humans, life sciences and AI for scientific discovery.
The Carnegie Mellon–Teleperformance AI–Human Research Center, a collaboration between CMU and Teleperformance, a global leader in customer experience management, aims to generate knowledge and solutions that shape the future of human–AI collaboration in service industries.
Catalyst is an interdisciplinary machine learning and systems research group that is building automated learning systems. Research spans multiple layers of the machine learning and system stack.
Today’s ML systems heavily rely on human effort to optimize the training and deployment of ML models on specific target platforms. Unlike conventional application domains, learning systems need to address a continuously growing complexity and diversity in machine learning models, hardware backends and runtime time environments. Catalyst is addressing this unique challenge
The Center for AI-Driven Biomedical Research (AI4BIO) aims to develop advanced AI/ML methods to decipher the intricate language governing cellular structure, function and communication across a wide range of biological contexts, from normal development to the formation of some of the most devastating incurable human diseases. AI4BIO is building new bridges and expanding the CMU’s leadership in AI for biomedicine.
The Center for Informed Democracy & Social – Cybersecurity (IDeaS) is CMU’s center for the study of disinformation, hate speech and extremism online. The center’s mission is to enhance social-cybersecurity to preserve and support an informed democratic society.
The Center for Innovation in Health (CIH) hosts the expertise needed to dramatically advance digital health research and technology. With renowned scientists and representation across numerous disciplines, CIH is focused on improving the effectiveness and efficiency of digital healthcare.
Research thrusts include but are not limited to digital bioscience and informatics, forecasting and generative AI, VR-based therapies, medical robotics, and clinical-care technologies and telehealth.
The Center for Machine Learning and Health (CMLH) is a collaboration between CMU, the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC. The center unites world-class computer science, artificial intelligence and medical research with clinical expertise and data to facilitate innovation in digital health. Projects focus on three areas: healthcare outcomes, consumer-oriented healthcare, and healthcare infrastructure and efficiencies.
The Center for Transformational Play (CTP) houses the research and development of transformational games. The center uses the power of play to tackle educational, industrial and social challenges, from teaching children about robotics to helping adults with aphasia rehabilitation exercises. Other projects include playful methods to support climate action, games to help with healthy sleep, game streaming for interactive learning and more. CTP aims for their work to be joyful, effective and valuable to those who engage with it.
The CMU-Amazon AI Innovation Hub includes research on generative AI, robotics, natural-language processing and cloud computing technologies. As part of the collaboration, Amazon supports joint research projects between CMU faculty and Amazon scientists, Ph.D. fellowships focusing on key technical challenges in AI, and regular symposia and workshops to foster collaboration.
The CMU Foundation and Language Model (FLAME) Center fosters fundamental research into powerful, open and responsible foundation models applicable to all sectors of science and technology.
Foundation models are machine learning models that are pre-trained on open-world data and then specialized for specific tasks. They are fast becoming a dominant paradigm in AI, leading the FLAME Center to investigate questions including: What sorts of algorithmic and architectural techniques should be used for such models? How do we evaluate the quality and performance of foundation models, especially in settings where there does not exist much downstream tasks data? And how do we grapple with the larger implications of these models and their ongoing adoption in industry?
The DARPA Triage Challenge aims to develop portable, autonomous systems that can assess and monitor injured individuals in remote or austere locations where advanced medical care is not immediately available. The challenge consists of multiple phases over several years, with teams advancing based on their ability to demonstrate increasingly autonomous and effective triage capabilities in realistic scenarios.
CMU’s Team Chiron is developing novel robotic technologies that combine unmanned aerial and ground vehicles with advanced AI to detect casualties, assess vital signs, and provide critical information to medical responders — potentially saving lives in scenarios ranging from battlefield injuries to natural disasters.
The Delphi Group develops the theory and practice of epidemiological forecasting, with a long-term vision of making this technology as universally accepted and useful as weather forecasting is today.
The Extended Reality Technology Center (XRTC) aims to boost research and development of augmented and virtual reality technologies, catalyzing their adoption in industry and society at large. Key applications include health care, industrial training, entertainment, and communication.
Unlike traditional maker spaces, which focus on building hardware, the JPMorgan Chase & Co. AI Maker Space concentrates on software development. The space houses state-of-the-art hardware available to students, who also have access to associated software packages and massive data sets to pursue independent research and complete projects.
CMU’s Responsible AI initiative brings together researchers and educators spanning computer science, engineering, decision sciences, philosophy, the arts, economics, psychology, public policy, statistics and business to direct advances in AI toward social responsibility.
The initiative is dedicated to ensuring AI technologies serve society equitably. Experts examine how AI impacts individuals and communities, develop frameworks for ethical AI deployment, and collaborate with policymakers, researchers, and industry leaders to promote responsible innovation.
Robotics, Embodied AI and Learning (REAL) integrates machine learning, computer vision, robotics and language technologies, culminating in the embodiment of artificial intelligence: robots that can see, do, think and act.
REAL aims to create a community of researchers who understand how each of the components of embodied AI interact with each other to create new technologies with novel applications.
WebAssembly (Wasm) has enabled a new, powerful class of web applications and languages and is being adopted in a diverse set of platforms from edge computing and distributed compute infrastructure to embedded systems and more. The WebAssembly Research Center supports the vision of Wasm as the next-generation universal execution platform, serving as a key intermediate layer between software and hardware.
What happens in SCS every day transforms industries and changes lives. We aren’t just planning for the future — we’re creating it. Join us.