About Us

The SMU - Carnegie Mellon Partnership

“This extraordinary LARC opportunity takes our existing relationship with CMU to a new level of research intensity. The SMU - CMU collaboration gives us a global edge in interdisciplinary research that integrates computation, management, and social science”.
- Professor Arnoud De Meyer, SMU President

“The Living Analytics Research Centre builds on CMU’s successful collaborations with SMU over the years. We are pleased to be partnering with SMU on such an exciting initiative, one that has great potential for groundbreaking work in the emerging field of computational social science.”
- Dr Jared L. Cohon, CMU President

“CMU has a long history of doing pioneering work at the interface of advanced computational, social and behavioural science. Living Analytics is our next major step in this direction. It enables us to combine our strength in machine learning, statistics, management science and social science - making us the ideal partner for SMU. Together, we are uniquely positioned to become leaders in the field of Living Analytics research. As information technology increasingly enables people to live their lives in social network-centric worlds, we can produce new tools and ways of thinking that will have considerable value for society and business organizations.”
- Professor Ramayya Krishnan, Dean of CMU’s Heinz College and Director of CMU iLab
LARC Steering Committee Member

“The SMU-Carnegie Mellon working relationship started in 2003, when we invited a team of five CMU faculty, including Ramayya Krishnan, to advise us on the design and launch of our School of Information Systems. We have been working together since that time, and as a result, we have established a very strong and trusted relationship built upon many faculty-to-faculty interactions over the years. Through these interactions, the initial ideas for Living Analytics took shape and evolved through an intensive co-creation process that resulted in LARC. Once again, the SMU School of Information Systems and Carnegie Mellon have demonstrated that by working together, we can create innovative organizations that push the boundaries of Information Technology Research and Applications in business and social contexts.”
- Professor Steven Miller, Dean of the SMU School of Information Systems

LARC will draw on the cross-disciplinary strengths of SMU and CMU faculty and span the two universities. It will be physically anchored at SMU’s School of Information Systems in Singapore and at CMU’s Heinz College iLab in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.

The School of Information Systems (SIS) is the lead academic unit on SMU’s side, and will manage the SMU university-wide effort to establish and operate LARC. The School of Information Systems will also take the lead in managing the university’s strategic and day-to-day relationship with CMU.

This collaboration will significantly utilize faculty from at least 5 of the 7 colleges at CMU (see above). CMU’s iLAB will serve as the coordinating unit across campus. CMU faculty from all 5 of these colleges are already engaged with iLAB, working on a variety of cutting edge projects related to computational social science, real-time web and social media analytics and impact analysis, and data-intensive computing.

SMU’s Collaboration with CMU through LARC includes a PhD student exchange and training programme. PhD students from SMU selected for the LARC special training attachment will spend up to 10 months training at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh under the supervision of faculty members who are actively involved in LARC projects.