The Doctoral Program in Social and Engineering Systems (SES) is a unique graduate research program focused on addressing concrete and societally significant problems by combining the analytical tools and methods of statistics and information sciences with engineering and the social sciences.
Challenge areas studied by SES students – Fall 2024
Research Areas
SES students study problems that correspond to significant societal challenges. In addition to IDSS’s ongoing work (e.g., on combatting systemic racism), new focuses are always emerging.
Climate change research has been major domain within IDSS since its inception (ongoing work with Christopher Knittel, Noelle Selin, Jessika Trancik). A new collaboration with Mechanical Engineering, Ocean Engineering, and IDSS focuses onlowering emissions in fleet shipping as the industry moves to meet ambitious emissions goals. Projects in ship design, alternative fuels, weather prediction, and port congestion are anticipated.
IDSS focuses on life sciences data across campus through relationships with organizations like Broad and IMES. Projects involving the application of statistics and data science to new sources of data are anticipated, particularly insights using health data.
It is driven by problems of societal interest. The focus of the program is the study of problems that correspond to significant societal challenges. This includes analytical research that can be used to inform policy making. An example of work that falls under this program would be studying systemic risk in the banking system and its impact on the overall financial system. In contrast, profit-maximizing portfolio management does not.
It involves quantitative methods. Societal problems or policy questions can be addressed from many different angles. However, this program focuses on problems that can be addressed through tools of computing and information sciences, including mathematical modeling and analysis, data science and statistics, and other quantitative methods.
It relies on real-world data. Research is expected to analyze data from the application domain of interest, and thus training in statistics is part of the program.
It engages societal aspects of the problem. The research is expected to examine the societal aspects of a problem (e.g., regulations, institutions, human behavior, or economic aspects), using theories and tools from the social sciences.
Learn More
Admissions: Info about the admissions process as well as answers to frequently asked questions. (Apply now!)
Program & Resources: A more detailed look at the program and links to some handy resources for current and prospective students, as well as advisors.
Research supported by the IDSS Initiative on Combatting Systemic Racism finds that large language models make inconsistent decisions about whether to call the police when analyzing surveillance videos.
Introducing structured randomization into decisions based on machine-learning model predictions can address inherent uncertainties while maintaining efficiency, says study from group including senior author and SDSC faculty Ashia Wilson and SES student and lead author Shomik Jain.
As an Associate Director of IDSS, Christia has chaired the SES PhD program, directed the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center, and co-led the Initiative on Combatting Systemic Racism.
