Over the last decade, we have made enormous progress establishing scientific and engineering principles for cyber-physical systems (CPS). We are now on the threshold of a world of physical systems that are deeply computational, dynamic, learning, and connected at all scales, yielding radical improvements in physical systems properties.

The next major frontier in science and engineering research and development is the integration of cyber-physical with human and social systems and phenomena across all major sectors and at all scales. Closing the loop from sensing to performance at all scales will give rise to cyber-social learning systems.

This first workshop, in a series of three workshops on cyber-social learning systems, focused on crosscutting basic science and engineering research challenges, grounded in the realities of sectors including health and healthcare, communities, and education. Specific objectives included:

1. Expand the community interested in cyber-social learning systems research and development, as established by earlier (2013 and 2015) NSF­-funded Learning Health System workshops, to include the broader CISE and NSF community and participants from major sectors beyond health and healthcare.

2. Explore issues involved in, and develop an initial rationale (to be refined in subsequent workshops) for, cyber-social systems research and development by producing sector-­specific scenarios that illustrate how cyber-­social learning systems theory, technology, and practice could address underperformance in these sectors to yield major improvements in the function and performance of major societal systems.

3. Develop an initial agenda for basic and applied research in cyber-­social learning systems (to be refined in subsequent workshops), integrating basic research in computing, engineering, and the social sciences, with applied research in multiple sectors, in part building on results from the 2013 and 2015 workshops.

This is part of a workshop series – view the series page.