Cornell University - Department of Information Science

Information Science examines information systems in their social, cultural, economic, historical, legal, and political contexts. Studying technology and the ways in which technology is used is essential to the field. Cornell Information Science was born out of the need to provide a home for academics who wanted to study the use of technology rather than the creation of it. Starting as an interdisciplinary minor in 2002, Cornell Information Science grew into a full-fledged major graduating the first five students in 2005. Since then, we've grown to nearly 500 undergraduate majors enrolled across all three schools, more than 200 master’s students and 89 PhDs. Our 42 faculty members are leaders in their respective fields within Information Science's interdisciplinary structure, specializing in areas like machine learning, artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, ubiquitous computing, user-experience design, tech-law policy, and much more. Cornell Information Science is one of three academic departments – along with Computer Science and Statistics and Data Science – housed under the parent college, the Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science. Scholars from our department can be found on Cornell's two campuses: in Gates Hall on the Cornell University campus, located in Ithaca, NY, and at the Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island in New York City.