Research

From Legal Codes to Coding: Computer Scientists Tackle Data Privacy Law

With new internet privacy regulations demanding compliance from data systems, computer science researchers from UC Davis and UC Irvine have partnered with a UC Davis law professor to translate the regulations into technical language. The next step to protecting people's privacy is to build a system that ensures existing systems can comply.

How Autocrats Control Internet Traffic Out of Sight

Authoritarian regimes exert control over the internet through transit networks that operate largely out of public view, according to a recent study by researchers in the U.S. and Germany. The work, published in PNAS Nexus, also shows how more sophisticated authoritarian regimes extend their influence by providing network access in poorer but politically similar countries.

A Solution for AI’s Bias Problem

As artificial intelligence gains momentum, University of California researchers are identifying discrimination in the algorithms that are shaping our society, devising solutions, and helping build a future where computers do us less harm and more good. 

YouTube Video Recommendations Lead to More Extremist Content for Right-Leaning Users, Researchers Suggest

A multidisciplinary research team in communication and computer science at the University of California, Davis, performed a systematic audit of YouTube’s video recommendations in 2021 and 2022. They tested how a person’s ideological leaning might affect what videos YouTube’s algorithms recommend to them.

A Nudge Toward Greener Flying

Air travel now accounts for about 3% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, and the sector’s emissions are rising: Global air travel more than doubled from 2004 to 2019. This is literally a first-world problem — most people on Earth fly rarely, if ever. By some estimates, the 1% of humans who fly most often are responsible for half of all air travel emissions.

Four College of Engineering Projects Receive CITRIS Seed Awards

Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society and the Banatao Institute (CITRIS) at the University of California (UC) recently announced the 2022 CITRIS Seed Awards recipients. The eight selected proposals, submitted by multicampus teams from Berkeley, Davis, Merced and Santa Cruz, will receive up to $60,000 for their work, thanks in part to external philanthropic support.