The study of intelligence in the modern cognitive sciences has largely become the study of representations (visual, linguistic, etc.) conceived computationally. This interdisciplinary science has, of course, several major aspects, and these at once illuminate each other and exist in a certain tension as they compete for the explanation of common, and related, phenomena. This view is the basis for the interdisciplinary work of IRCS over the past decade. The philosophy governing research at IRCS has been to look for progress at these disciplinary boundaries, where the need for integration and the uncertainty about how to achieve it stimulate scientific creativity.

Since its inception, IRCS has seen considerable growth in both the number of researchers working at the Institute and the types of projects undertaken. IRCS currently has over 50 affiliated faculty from nine departments in the School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Engineering and Applied Science. IRCS' programs directly impact such technologies as graphics and animation, robotics and computer vision, spoken and written natural language interfaces, machine translation, information extraction systems, software development, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and bioinformatics.

Research at IRCS is structured under four inter-related scientific foci:
Economic and Strategic Behavior and Computation
Language Acquisition, Structure, and Processing
Logic and Computation
Perception and Action

Affiliated Laboratories

Cognitive Neuroscience Research Laboratory
Color Perception Lab
General Robotics and Active Sensory Perception (GRASP) Lab
Graphics Lab/Center for Human Modeling and Simulation
Human Vision Research Lab
Infant Language Center
Language, Information, and Computation (LINC) Lab
Language Development and Language Processing Lab

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Computing Facilities

At present, the bulk of IRCS' computing resources exist within the shared resources of the research computing facility of the Department of Computer and Information Science (CIS). They are accessed by non-CIS members via the internet or the campus network. E-mail access is also provided via these shared facilities.

The primary computing resources are based on large configuration Sun UltraSPARC servers running Sun Solaris. Research groups have one or more dedicated Sun servers as well as other computers including Sun UltraSPARC workstations, PCs, and Macintosh PowerPC. High resolution printers are located throughout the facilities. All of IRCS' offices have workstations, as well as many workstations available throughout IRCS, all of which are capable of accessing any system in the shared facilities.

The IRCS main seminar room is equipped with a multimedia presentation projection system that provides for large screen demonstrations using Macintosh, Windows, Unix, and/or VHS videotape.

Each computer is connected to an Ethernet network and supports the TCP/IP protocol. The Ethernet is gatewayed to PennNet and to the Internet.