Ahmanson Lab Collaboratories

What are Collaboratories?

Collaboratories are yearlong projects, directed by one or more USC faculty, that combine guided interdisciplinary research with innovative digital making. While Collaboratories are often tied to, and advance, faculty research, their ultimate aim is to engage undergraduate students in work that connects academic research with design thinking and digital fabrication. 

Collaboratories have two main components, First, they engage students in interdisciplinary research around a particular theme (e.g. immersive journalism), problem (e.g. terraforming Mars), or a socially vital topic (e.g. the future of democracy). The research topic is typically connected to work already being done by the faculty member(s) who direct the Collaboratory. Second, they engage students in the design and development of an interactive digital experience (e.g. a screen-based game; an augmented reality app; a multimedia digital publication; a virtual reality environment) that structures and/or communicates interdisciplinary research in a unique manner. The fabrication of the digital project is directed by Ahmanson Lab staff and the Collaboratory’s faculty member(s). Faculty need not have any technical expertise related to the production of the Collaboratory’s digital project. Ahmanson Lab staff provide all technical support as well as all project management and planning, allowing faculty to focus on content.

Sound interesting? 

Faculty: Calls for proposals are announced each summer. See our CFP for more details. 

Students: See our Ahmanson Lab Innovation Scholars program for more details.

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    Reclaim 2025

    2024-2025

    Students in this Collaboratory will create compelling original content that will counter misinformation in spaces like TikTok, Twitch, and YouTube. The team will merge creative media production with scholarly research on misinformation, online hate, and social networks. We will develop strategies and templates for the production and circulation of content and connect with a variety of partners.
    See the Collaboratory
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    Large Language Models, Hate Speech, and Alternative Narratives

    2024-2025

    Students in this Collaboratory will design, develop, and prototype a large language model-powered chatbot aimed at countering far-right hate speech and misinformation online. The team will develop a framework that allows the bot to identify and address specific forms of hate speech and implement a particular style of engagement for the bot to effectively promote alternative narratives.
    See the Collaboratory

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    Generative AI, Disinformation, and the 2024 Election

    2023-2024

    Students in this Collaboratory will explore potential misuse and abuse cases for generative AI in the 2024 presidential election. Under the guidance of faculty and other project leaders, students will conceptualize and research specific instances of potential AI-generated disinformation campaigns in 2024, and then model, test and evaluate their scenarios.
    See this Collaboratory
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    Reclaim Project

    2023-2024

    Students will work with an Ahmanson Lab-based research team, the Reclaim Project, to form partnerships to foster democratic dialogue. The team will create compelling original content that will counter misinformation in spaces like TikTok, Twitch, and YouTube and will also connect to and learn from the larger international team of researchers.
    See this Collaboratory

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    CCCLVR

    2022-2023

    Students in this collaboratory will work alongside the Canyon Country Cultural Landscapes Virtual Reality (CCCLVR) team to identify and solve critical problems in user experience (UX) design for cultural heritage applications. CCCLVR is currently partnering with indigenous communities, land management agencies, archaeologists, ethnographers, and conservationists, to develop Moon House VR(MHVR), an interactive virtual reality experience featuring the cultural heritage and landscapes of the American Southwest.
    See this Collaboratory
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    Firescapes

    2022-2023

    The Firescape Collaboratory will focus resources to research and visualize the complex interplay of Los Angeles wildfires, powerlines (literal and political) and trees as a series of lenses to view our increasingly vulnerable landscape. Climate change demands that we train ourselves to acknowledge the complex interplay of our surroundings: the demand and delivery of electricity and water; over-and-undergrowth of trees and brush; disparities between neighborhoods.
    See this Collaboratory

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    California Text + Terrain

    2021-2022

    Students in this Collaboratory designed an immersive digital experience that illustrates the power of words and ideology on California’s social and environmental future. The digital experience was showcased as part of USC Libraries' Visions & Voices event, California Dystopia: Understanding Climate Change and Social Collapse through Science Fiction.
    See this Collaboratory
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    The Chinatown History Project

    2021-2022

    The Chinatown History Project (CHP) is a multi-faceted research and outreach endeavor to uncover the people and places of Los Angeles’ “first Chinatown” prior to its demolition in the late 1930s. The CHP will be working throughout 2021-2022 with potential partners, including the city of Los Angeles and Los Angeles Metro, to design and build digital projects that commemorate Old Chinatown for the 150th anniversary of the 1871 Chinese massacre.
    See this Collaboratory
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    Bunker Hill Refrain

    2021-2022

    Students in the Bunker Hill Refrain Collaboratory conducted research with primary sources, worked with GIS data, and explored ways to output their findings in various digital formats, including digital mapping, data visualizations, and a short film. Students also helped design and fabricate a 3D reconstruction of Bunker Hill from the late 1930s and early 1940s. Students’ demographic research using WPA census cards was then incorporated into the 3D model as an interactive experience.
    See this Collaboratory
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    Distant Destinations

    2019-2020

    Students in this Collaboratory worked with Kenneth E. Phillips from USC’s Department of Physics and Astronomy and Curator for Aerospace Science at the California Science Center as well as the Center’s Curation and Exhibit Development Team to research and design an interactive, multiplayer museum exhibit on the challenges of human-piloted deep space missions.
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    Building a Virtual Renaissance Library

    2019-2020

    Students in this Collaboratory reconstructed a digital version of the “Julian Library.” In doing so, they analyzed Renaissance books in USC Libraries' Special Collections; researched the paintings, the collected manuscripts and their authors; and considered Renaissance linear perspective in connection to today’s digital constructs.
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    Futures of Democracy

    2018-2019

    Students in the Futures of Democracy collaboratory designed and crafted a game kit intended to facilitate community and individual engagement with present-day issues through acts of playful speculation. The Futures of Democracy kit contains a series of games that allow players to explore democracy-related issues such as campaign finance, corruption, and political compromise.
    See this Collaboratory
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    Terraforming Mars

    2018-2019

    Students worked with Brian Cantrell from USC’s World Building Media Lab to research, speculate, and sketch out future aspects of a terraformed Mars, ranging from infrastructural and energy needs to the cultural and social makeup of early settlers. Students then worked with Ahmanson Lab staff and Erik Loyer, an award-winning creative technologist, to build out an annotated virtual reality experience of their speculative world.
    See this Collaboratory
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    Mapping and App-ing Los Angeles

    2018-2019

    This collaboratory addressed the dual issues of a disjointed Los Angeles and a declining local press by working in partnership with the L.A. Times to create a mobile app for delivering immersive journalism. Students in this collaboratory explored ways to tell newsrooms stories using augmented reality, focusing, in particular, on large-scale environmental reports (e.g. stories about floods, hurricanes or fires) that when read, are often hard to visualize.
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