Research Area Spotlight: Data Science and the Digital Humanities

The Institute for Data, Research, and Innovation Science (IDRIS) is an organizing hub for applied, social, ethical, and responsible scholarship in data science and emerging technologies at Rutgers University–Newark. 

The mission at IDRIS:

• To use data and technology to interrogate and address wicked problems (e.g., health, environmental, data quality, data literacy, responsible AI and other technologies) facing urban communities.
• To situate data science, artificial intelligence (AI), and other technologies in an ethical, community-engaged framework that meaningfully accounts for human and urban complexities.

The focal themes at IDRIS: 

• Data Work and Science
• Technology
• Ethics
• Responsible and Applied
• Anchor-Driven Urban-Solutions

IDRIS focuses on interrogating and addressing the following problems:

• Health
• Environmental
• Data Quality
• Data Literacy
• Responsible AI and Other Technologies

IDRIS also focuses on collaborations across other Rutgers data science organizations, such as the Rutgers Health Center for Biomedical Informatics & Health Artificial Intelligence (BMIHAI) and the RAD Collaboratory. 

IDRIS Leadership

IDRIS Executive Director
Fay Cobb Payton, Ph.D.

Dr. Fay Cobb-Payton is an award-winning researcher, international speaker and entrepreneur. She is a Special Advisor to the Chancellor for Innovation, Professor (with Tenure) in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Rutgers University – Newark and an affiliate faculty in the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. She is the director of the Institute for Data, Research and Innovation Science (IDRIS) at Rutgers University – Newark.

She is also Professor Emerita and was a Full Professor (with Tenure) of Information Technology/Analytics at North Carolina State University. She completed a rotation as a Program Director at the National Science Foundation where she initiated the CISE Minority Serving Institution Research Expansion Program, and worked on several initiatives, such as Smart Health and Biomedical Research in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Data Science; AI Fairness, Equity, Accountability & Transparency; and Research Expansion and Cloud Computing with partnerships with Amazon, Google and Microsoft. She received the NSF Director’s Award during her rotation at the agency.

Dr. Payton is a member of the National Academics of Science, Engineering and Medicine’s Committee on Women in Science, Engineering and Medicine. She is a member of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine Consensus Study on Transforming Trajectories: Women of Color in Tech dissemination team. She has published over 150 peer-reviewed journal articles, conference publications and book chapters on topics of data quality, AI bias/ethics, healthcare and innovation.

Learn more about Dr. Payton here. 

Learn more about IDRIS here. 

Critical AI @ Rutgers is an interdisciplinary initiative at Rutgers University, organized and led by a steering committee with the support of the Center for Cultural Analysis, the Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science, and the Rutgers Artificial Intelligence and Data Science Collaboratory (RAD). 

Learn more about Critical AI @ Rutgers here.

Critical AI, an interdisciplinary journal, is edited at Rutgers and published twice annually by Duke University Press, 

The journal recognizes interdisciplinary research as a powerful tool for building and implementing accountable technology in the public interest. Open to ideas born of new cross-disciplinary disciplinary alliances; design justice principles; antiracist, decolonial, and democratic political practices; community-centered collaborations; experimental pedagogies; and public outreach, Critical AI functions as a space for the production of knowledge, research endeavors, teaching ideas, and public humanities that bears on the ongoing history of machine technologies and their place in the world. The journal accepts submissions from any discipline on any relevant topic and currently features ongoing series clusters on Virtuality, Embodiment, and Meaning-Making in AI Technologies (Editor, Alexa Alice Joubin, George Washington); Generative AI and Writing in Higher Education (Editor, Marit J. MacArthur, University of California, Davis), and Generative AI and/as Religion (Editor, John Modern, Franklin and Marshall). 

Read Critical AI’s latest issue here. 

Critical AI @ Rutgers’ living document, Teaching Critical Al Literacies, is a collaboratively authored document maintained by the Critical Al editorial team. The information and analyses it collects have helped thousands of educators all over the world to equip themselves for their teaching and research. We also offer an abbreviated Student Guide that can be downloaded for embedding in course sites and for in-class ice breakers.

Critical AI @ Rutgers’ Design Justice Labs web platform shares peer-reviewed research and teaching resources from educators and students themselves.  We believe that the teaching  of critical Al literacies is crucial for empowering teachers, students, and the public at large and enabling them to judge for themselves when, if, and to what extent the use of automated tools makes sense for their learning, living, and working.

The resources published on Design Justice Labs (including research by students themselves)  illustrates how people can learn to about new technologies from the stance of researchers rather than users.

Editor in Chief of Critical AI: Lauren M. E. Goodlad

Lauren M. E. Goodlad is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature, editor of Critical AI and chair of Critical AI @ Rutgers. She is a faculty affiliate of the Center for Cultural Analysis (CCA), the Rutgers British Studies Center, and the Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science. 

Her grants in the emerging field of critical AI studies and the teaching of critical AI literacies include an NEH international grant ("Unboxing AI') to create workshops and other programming in collaboration with partners at the Australian National University; DESIGN JUSTICE AI (a Global Humanities Institute at the University of Pretoria in July 2024 followed by a post-institute at Rutgers in May 2025); DESIGN JUSTICE LABS (begun as an NEH grant for the creation of a shared digital infrastructure for student- and community-centered teaching about and research on "generative AI"); and an NSF planning grant (in collaboration with lead-PI Matthew Stone) to research and explore design-oriented thinking in the terrain of teaching College Writing. For examples of her work, see the editor's introduction to Critical AI, "Humanities in the Loop"; the introduction to DATA WORLDS (co-authored with Katherine Bode); and the two-part special issue co-editor with Matthew Stone (Computer Science) of the two-part special issue of Critical AI on Large Language Models, Generative AI, and the Rise of Chatbots. (Duke University Press, September, 2024).

Read Lauren Goodlad's recent "Humanist in the Loop" essay on the teaching of critical AI literacies, here.

An AI and Data Science Hub

The RAD Collaboratory, like the Office of the Chancellor’s Fall 2023 launch of the Rutgers Climate and Energy Institute, is a Chancellor Signature Initiative (CSI) that aligns with Rutgers–New Brunswick Academic Master Plan. This initiative serves as a hub for data science, artificial intelligence, student programming, and community engagement. The RAD Collaboratory will be comprised of different research areas, each led by a faculty area lead. Current research areas include Institute for Quantitative Biomedicine/Protein Data Bank and Artificial Intelligence for Society. 

The visionary initiative began taking shape in Fall 2022 when the Rutgers-New Brunswick Office for Research, led by Senior Vice Provost for Research Denise Hien, convened a strategic task force on cyberinfrastructure, AI, and data science. The task force report can be found here.

The RAD Collaboratory is more than just a hub; it is a transformative ecosystem designed to break down academic silos and foster collaboration across schools, departments, centers, and institutes. The goal is to create an environment where faculty, students, and community members can come together to address societal grand challenges through responsible AI and data science applications. Some crosscutting Rutgers initiatives and resources include:

• Center for Computational Biomedicine Imaging and Modeling (CBIM)
• Human Genetics Institute of New Jersey
• Institute for Quantitative Biomedicine (IQB)
• Institute for Teaching, Innovation, & Inclusive Pedagogy
• Rutgers DIMACS
• Rutgers Health Center for Biomedical Informatics & Health Artificial Intelligence (BMIHAI)
• Rutgers Office of Statistical Consulting
• Rutgers Newark Institute for Data, Research and Innovation Science (IDRIS)
• New Jersey Big Data Alliance
• WINLAB
• Data Resources:
  • RUCOOL
  • Protein Data Bank
• Cyberinfrastructure and Computing
  • Rutgers Information Technology

The Rutgers Artificial Intelligence and Data Science (RAD) Collaboratory is led by University Professor and Henry Rutgers Chair Stephen Burley who serves as its director.

Stephen Burley is an expert in structural biology, proteomics, data science, structure/fragment-based drug discovery, and clinical medicine/oncology. Burley currently serves as University Professor and Henry Rutgers Chair, Founding Director of the Institute for Quantitative Biomedicine, Director of the RCSB Protein Data Bank, Member of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. He is also a Member of the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, where he Co-Leads the Cancer Pharmacology Research Program. 

From 2008 to 2012, Burley was a Distinguished Lilly Research Scholar in Eli Lilly and Co. Prior to joining Lilly, Burley served as the Chief Scientific Officer and Senior Vice President of SGX Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a biotechnology company that went public on the NASDAQ in 2006 and was acquired by Lilly in 2008. Until 2002, Burley was the Richard M. and Isabel P. Furlaud Professor at The Rockefeller University and an Investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. 

He has authored/coauthored more than 300 scholarly scientific articles in high-impact peer-reviewed journals including Science, Science Advances, Cell, Molecular Cell, Structure, Nature, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Chemical Biology, Nature Genetics, Nature Methods, Nature Oncogene, Nature Scientific Data, Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, New England Journal of Medicine, Nucleic Acids Research, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Journal of Molecular Biology, PLOS Computational  Biology, Bioinformatics, and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education.

Learn more about Stephen Burley here. 

Learn more about The Rutgers Artificial Intelligence and Data Science (RAD) Collaboratory here.
 

Shaping the future of communication, media, and information

The School of Communication and Information at Rutgers–New Brunswick is a place for people who want to understand how communication, media, and information connect us — and how these forces shape society. Since 1982, SC&I has brought together scholars, creators, problem solvers, and community-minded leaders who are driven to make a real impact.

Library and Information Science Department

The Department of Library and Information Science in the School of Communication and Information (SC&I) has a distinguished record of research, education, and community outreach that spans many decades.

Mission: We believe that information makes a profound difference in the lives of people, communities, and organizations. Our research enhances people's lives by supporting their interactions with information in all forms. We educate future-ready professionals in diverse information service and technology contexts.

Vision: Enhancing human experience and quality of life in a dynamic information world, our goal is to pursue preeminence and leadership through boundary-breaking research and innovative professional and academic programs.

Faculty Spotlight: Charles Senteio - Associate Professor of Library and Information Science

Dr. Charles Senteio is an Associate Professor in the Department of Library and Information Science at Rutgers University, whose work at the intersection of critical AI and health equity focuses on how marginalized populations interact with algorithmic tools. 

His research specifically evaluates inherent bias in AI-based diagnostic tools and machine learning algorithms, highlighting how datasets that lack racial and gender diversity can perpetuate health outcome inequities.

Charles Senteio uses mixed methods to investigate how healthcare practitioners and patients can better use information to improve chronic disease outcomes for at-risk patients – while reducing cost of care – through financially sustainable care delivery models. He develops and enhances innovative, scalable approaches to care delivery, with a particular emphasis on community-based participatory (CBPR) research strategies. His dissertation describes the psychosocial factors that practitioners consider in providing outpatient diabetes care. Among his findings are the perceived facilitators and barriers to using Electronic Health Record (EHR) tools to document and use pertinent psychosocial information.

Learn more about Dr. Senteio here.

The Digital Studies Center is a research center that conducts and supports research at the convergence of digital technologies and the various disciplines of the Rutgers-Camden College of Arts and Sciences. DiSC researchers work on a number of ongoing projects, and it also offers an interdisciplinary major and minor in Digital Studies to undergraduates of Rutgers-Camden.

DiSC Projects:

Digital History Team

Directed by Dr. Jesse Bayker, the Digital History team works to create public-facing projects that document state and local history. Two projects now underway are the New Jersey Slavery Records and Black Camden Oral History Project.

New Jersey Slavery Records

New Jersey Slavery Records is an open-access database that documents the history of slavery in New Jersey through archival sources, linked open data, and digital maps. We partner with archival institutions throughout the state to gather and organize historical data about individuals who lived in bondage. Researchers work to digitize, index, and transcribe a wide range of sources such as runaway ads, ship manifests, slave auction notices and bills of sale, birth certificates of enslaved children, indenture contracts, manumission (freedom) certificates, and court records documenting kidnappings and illegal slave trafficking in New Jersey.

Black Camden Oral History Project

The Black Camden Oral History Project aims to preserve the history of African American life and activism in Camden. The project records the narratives of African Americans whose stories shed light on Civil Rights and Black Power-era activism and community organizing, Black business and entrepreneurship, and Black social life and cultural institutions in the city. Student researchers are working to process audio interviews, conduct supplementary research in historical newspapers, organize scans of historical documents and photographs donated by Camden residents, and curate these items into a cohesive storytelling website and multimedia output.

About Dr. Jesse Bayker:

Dr. Jesse Bayker is an Assistant Teaching Professor of History at Rutgers University–Camden and the Associate Director of the Digital Studies Center (DiSC). His research and teaching interests include the history of gender and sexuality, LGBTQ history, digital history, U.S. history, and the history of New Jersey. Dr. Bayker is the developer of the New Jersey Slavery Records database and the co-director of the Black Camden Oral History Project.

Before joining the history department at Rutgers–Camden, Dr. Bayker worked as a Digital Archivist at the Institute for the Study of Global Racial Justice at Rutgers University–New Brunswick. Dr. Bayker received a PhD in History from Rutgers University–New Brunswick and a BA in History and LGBTQ Studies from CUNY Brooklyn College. He completed a Mellon Fellowship at the Museum of the City of New York.

Other DiSC Projects

Well Played

Well Played is a qualitative research group dedicated to studying digital recreational spaces, or spaces in which people engage in various forms of digitally mediated entertainment and play. We are interested in the diverse forms of moral and political significance that people attribute to the activities, discourses, and social interactions that flow through these spaces. By exploring the moral and political dimensions of digital recreation, we emphasize how seemingly superficial and virtual activities can reproduce ideas and norms that have profound social and material consequences. Each member of the group is conducting their own case study under the supervision of Dr. Wright. In doing so, they are learning to carry out semi-structured interviews, digital ethnographic fieldwork, and discourse analyses. 

Well Played Research Group Members:

Tyler Walker, Junior, Digital Studies and Film

Tyler Walker’s research explores the politics of race, immigration, and childhood in the video game Life Is Strange 2. The game follows Sean and Daniel, orphaned sons of a Latino migrant father who was ruthlessly murdered in front of them. As the boys traverse the United States, their experiences shed light on a range of challenging themes, including racism, exclusion, exploitation, verbal and physical abuse, homelessness, and xenophobia. Tyler shows how the game, although fictional, provides a window into very real forms of intersectional oppression that affect migrant children and families. 

Tyler is a 23-year-old junior at Rutgers University, Camden, where he is majoring in film. He is also part of the Well Played research team at the Digital Studies Center, where he has carried out projects that explore queer youth and intersectional identities in digital environments. In addition to his research and coursework, Tyler is an artist and songwriter who is in pursuit of a career in music and artist development. 

Cosmo Luizza, Class of 2026, Digital Studies and English

What does it take to sustain a career as a content creator for over 15 years? How does content evolve over time, and what impact does this have on fan cultures that develop around specific content creators? These are the questions Cosmo Luizza aims to answer with their research on the decade-and-a-half-long career of queer British YouTubers Dan Howell and Phil Lester. Drawing on analysis of YouTube videos and comment threads, interviews with other fans of Dan and Phil, and autoethnographic reflections on their own experience as a fan, Cosmo shows how Dan and Phil’s content and the community that has grown up around it have changed over time, particularly after Dan and Phil came out as a gay couple, having been closeted for years. Since then, the community has become increasingly politicized around issues of race, gender, and sexuality, voicing their support for Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ+ rights, and the fight against the genocide of Palestinians. 

Cosmo Luizza graduated from Rutgers-Camden in 2026 with a B.A. in English and Digital Studies. Their research explores the evolution of digital cultures and communities. They are passionate about multimedia art and create digital content related to their work. Cosmo plans to continue their research and creative work by pursuing a graduate degree in the digital humanities.

Learn more about the Digital Studies Center here.