CASCI, or The Center for the Advanced Study of Communities and Information, is a multi-disciplinary research center located at the University of Maryland, College Park

University of Maryland, College Park

The University of Maryland, College Park is a top-ranked public research university located in the city of College Park in Prince George's County, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C...

, USA. The center's goal is to increase understanding of community interactions and to harness the power of novel technologies to support the needs of real and virtual communities. The Center was inaugurated on November 13, 2008. The director is Derek Hansen, an assistant professor in the iSchool at the University of Maryland.

Projects

Ongoing projects include:

• Improving Mass Vaccination Clinic Operations
• External Knowledge Management and Climate Change
• Libraries, Technology, and Older Adult Communities
• How and Why Physicists and Chemists Use Blogs

Funding

At the inaugural ceremony, Dr. Marc Smith, Chief Social Scientist for Telligent Systems

Telligent Systems

Telligent Systems, more commonly referred to as Telligent, is an enterprise collaboration and community software company. Founded in 2004, Telligent's U.S...

 and founder of the Community Technologies Group at Microsoft Research

Microsoft Research

Microsoft Research is the research division of Microsoft created in 1991 for developing various computer science ideas and integrating them into Microsoft products. It currently employs Turing Award winners C.A.R. Hoare, Butler Lampson, and Charles P...

, presented the CASCI Director with a $2,000 gift to support the Center's activities.

Activities

Each Tuesday morning there is a roundtable discussion; some of these feature speakers from funding agencies interested in community-related projects, while others are more informal discussions. Skill-building workshops are also held, in which professors or students with particular expertise present their ideas to the group.