About

Like an astronomer with a telescope that can help us see 1,000 times farther, we now have a chance at building the tools to understand human society well enough to ameliorate some of its major problems. The spectacular successes we have seen in the last few years are nothing compared to what is coming.  Come join us; you can make a difference here.

IQSS aims to accomplish its goals by building bridges from academia to the rest of the world -- by collaborating with industry and governments in incentive-compatible ways to produce social good for academia, companies, and the general public; by incubating programs, centers, and initiatives to become part of the Institute, other parts of Harvard, and independent nonprofits and commercial startups; and by building cutting edge infrastructure so scholars can do social science research better, faster, bigger, and more efficiently here than anywhere in the world.  We foster a flourishing community where students, faculty, and staff leverage each other's advances to take us all to the next level; see our transparent metrics on Institute performance, detailed roadmaps of where we've been and where we're going, our ever advancing scientific programs, and some of our widely used open source software products.

We are proud of the numerous centers and institutes at universities around the world set up to copy what we have built at IQSS. Administrators from other institutions visit here so regularly that we have standard protocols of meetings and tours for these events, and have even written an article summarizing our suggestions for them (see Restructuring the Social Sciences: Reflections from Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science). We aim to lead in a collaborative academic ways -- helping others build what we have built, while continuing to stay ahead by developing the next innovation to push forward the science of society to new heights.