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

H-STAR, the Human-Sciences and Technologies Advanced Research Institute, is administered in the Stanford Graduate School of Education and is a Stanford interdisciplinary research center focusing on people and information technology — how people use technology, how to better design technology to make it more usable (and more competitive in the marketplace), how technology affects 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 are at the heart of the H-STAR research agendas are:

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

ChangeLabs seeks 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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Behavior Design Lab

The Stanford Behavior Design Lab creates insight into how computing products can be designed to change what people believe and what they do, to bring about positive changes in many domains, including health, business, safety, and education.
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Workshops

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