H-STAR was a Stanford interdisciplinary research center focusing on people and technology

H-STAR, the Human-Sciences and Technologies Advanced Research Institute, ceased its formal operations on March 31, 2022. This website contains highlights from over the two decades of operation. We humbly acknowledge the intellectual strength and generosity of the Stanford research community in providing thought leadership and in engaging in exploratory dialogues to share early results, preliminary findings, and nascent research questions. H-STAR was administered in the Stanford Graduate School of Education and was a Stanford interdisciplinary research center focusing on people and information technology — how people used technology, how to better design technology to make it more usable (and more competitive in the marketplace), how technology affected people’s lives, and the innovative use of technologies in research, education, art, business, commerce, entertainment, communication, national security, and other walks of life.

Among the large, complex, global problems that were at the heart of the H-STAR research agendas were:

Human-Centered Tech

Ensuring pervasive safety and health of people over the lifespan with human-centered technology innovations.
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Security

Solving security and trust problems of computing, communications and information systems at home, work and in governmental affairs.
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Accelerating Innovation

Accelerating innovation to create and diffusion products and services that better meet today's human needs.
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Digital Divides

Closing digital divides across class, race, gender, age and nations to provide equal opportunities to learn and work productively for personal and societal well-being.
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Technology Complexity

Reducing the complexity of information technology to enable its wide spread adoption and appropriate use.
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H-STAR Outreach Programs

mediaX at Stanford University

mediaX looked to build bridges among scholars and thought leaders to address questions of importance within both academia and industry. Fundamental to the mediaX vision was the belief that the program serveed two customers: industry partners that affiliate with the program, and the research community within Stanford University.
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ChangeLabs

ChangeLabs looked to define and advance the field of Transformation Innovation, to create a strong trans-disciplinary global community, and to generate new large-scale, sustainable transformation models along with the mechanisms to diffuse them rapidly in practice.
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Workshops

Workshops hosted by H-STAR focused on major global issues. There was no shortage of smart people with good ideas for how to improve things, but much of the activity consistsed of isolated, scatter-shot projects.
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