About the Social and Cognitive Informatics Laboratory

The Social and Cognitive Informatics Laboratory (SCILA), the successor to the Laboratory for Internet Studies established in 2012, conducts research at the intersection of artificial intelligence and the study of human interaction with information technologies. The lab focuses on modeling how individuals and groups engage with information, digital platforms, and each other, and on developing algorithms and AI-based solutions that improve these interactions. A major focus area is health communication and information processing, alongside broader domains of socially significant decision-making.  SCILA’s work combines algorithmic development in AI — including retrieval-augmented generation, model steering, pruning, system-level prompting, and other middleware approaches — with experimental and empirical methods from the social, behavioral and cognitive sciences. Its interdisciplinary team emphasizes the principled adaptation, evaluation, and domain-specific deployment of large language models and related systems, aiming to build collaborative, application-oriented AI solutions with measurable social impact.