Laboratory for Computational Cultural Dynamics

Welcome to the LCCD

The Laboratory for Computational Cultural Dynamics (LCCD) is a multidisciplinary research laboratory housed in the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS). The lab focuses on the development of algorithms to automatically track open source information related to terror groups, tribes, and socio-cultural-political entities, automated tools to learn models of the behaviors of such groups from both automatically gathered data and specialized hand-coded data, algorithms to support different kinds of behavioral analytics (including forecasting, what-if reasoning, policy formulation) and computational environments that allow human decision makers to leverage both their own expertise and the data and algorithms developed at LCCD to best support their mission.

In order to address this formidable task, LCCD consists of a mix of computer scientists, social scientists and policy makers associated with the University of Maryland, country or regional experts, as well as partners from a number of companies, government organizations and other institutions.

ICCCD 2009

Registration is open!

Register here for the 3rd International Conference on Computational Cultural Dynamics (ICCCD 2009), which will be held at College Park, MD on December 7-8. This inter-disciplinary conference brings the social sciences and technological fields together in order to build new tools for reasoning about groups in diverse cultures.

Papers are being presented on such diverse topics as efforts model insurgencies and piracy in Somalia, SCARE (Spatial Cultural Abductive Reasoning Engine) which can help predict weapons cache locations in an urban environment, and a tool used to map the Indonesian blogosphere.

The invited talks will include presentations by such scholar-practitioners as Cmdr. Dylan Schmorrow the Assistant Director of Human Systems at the Office of the Secretary of Defense and Hon. Romain Murenzi, Rwanda's Minister of Science and Technology.

See the full program

Recent News

Baltimore Sun features LCCD's work on IED Cache Detection

December 29, 2009

The Baltimore Sun ran an article on the work by LCCD researchers Paulo Shakarian and V.S. Subrahmanian on their SCARE system that uses abductive reasoning to locate IED (improvised explosive device) caches in Iraq. (Minor clarification: The sentences "Certainly it could be used to model the behaviors of large institutional investors," he said. "We could use it to model the behaviors of political organizations." in the second last paragraph of the article did not apply to the SCARE effort, but to the SOMA effort going on in the lab.)

Popular Science Covers SCARE

December 11, 2009

Popular Science publishes a piece on the Spatio-Cultural Abductive Reasoning Engine (SCARE), work done by LCCD members Paulo Shakarian and V.S. Subrahmanian and Professor Maria-Luisa Sapino of the University of Torino, Italy. SCARE uses IED attack data to predict the locations of supporting weapons caches run by insurgents. The full article can be found on Popular Science's site.

What Can Virtual Worlds and Games Do for National Security?

November 26, 2009

Science publishes a paper by LCCD researchers V.S.Subrahmanian and John Dickerson on how virtual worlds together with behavioral models of terror groups can help improve national security. An abstract is available here, but you need a subscription to Science to see the whole article.

LCCD Work on Virtual Worlds and National Security Featured by Scientific American

November 26, 2009

Scientific American.com publishes an article on the work by LCCD researchers V.S. Subrahmanian and John Dickerson on virtual worlds and national security issues. You can see the entire article on ScientificAmerican.com. If you'd like to read other takes on this work, see this Science Daily article, or coverage by Daily India.

LCCD in Foreign Policy Magazine

November 16, 2009

Foreign Policy Magazine publishes an article by LCCD researchers Aaron Mannes and V.S. Subrahmanian on why Hezbollah has been quiet during the first half of 2009. The article explains how Stochastic Opponent Modeling Agents provide insight into Hezbollah's activities. The article can be found here.

SOMA Featured on Primetime Television

October 23, 2009

LCCD's work on Stochastic Opponent Modeling Agents (SOMA) was featured on the October 23rd episode of the popular television crime drama Numb3rs (episode title "Hydra"). The show directly references SOMA and uses SOMA-like techniques to solve the kidnapping of a young girl. Videos here and here.

LCCD's Analysis of why Hamas has been Quiet featured by the Jewish Policy Center

September 15, 2009

An article by LCCD's Aaron Mannes and V.S. Subrahmanian explaining why Hamas has been quiet in 2009 was featured on the Jewish Policy Center web page. See the whole article at Jewish Policy Center.

In the past, our work has been featured in the Washington Post (1, 2), Science (1, 2), New Scientist (1), Scientific American (1), Information Week (1), Foreign Policy (1), and the Wall Street Journal (1), among others.