About us

The Behavioral Research Innovation Center (BRIC) is dedicated to accelerating scientific innovation by developing responsible computational research infrastructure for studying human behavior. We aim to empower global researchers to expand the boundaries of knowledge. Current institutions can discourage innovators from creating user-friendly, well-maintained infrastructure and regularly relegate advances in computational methods to the appendix of an academic article in a disciplinary journal. Significant progress can be made across fields when researchers can adapt tools from one context to another without reinventing the wheel. Further, when computational approaches require fewer resources to use and are co-designed with diverse researchers, scientific innovation can advance to benefit more communities. This vision is the foundation of BRIC.

BRIC Co-founder and Audacious Software Founder Chris Karr has taken up sailing on Lake Michigan. He humorously noted that if he ended up on the bottom of the lake, millions of dollars of research projects would go down with him. This highlights a common issue in behavioral research software development, which often relies heavily on single team members or outside organizations. While BRIC cannot solve this problem alone, we can build a supportive network and provide services for open-source software projects that do critical work, such as detecting suicidal ideation, providing evidence-based support to at-risk mothers, and promoting dialogue among citizens. We will raise awareness across social and behavioral science disciplines—from public health to political communication—about common tools, methods, and practices in computational research methods.

Our programs are designed to support computational research from the first spark of innovation to turn-key infrastructure. The lab program will continue our co-founders’ cutting-edge work developing novel research tools, and publishing reports, conference papers, and journal articles. The research consulting program will continue our co-founder's work co-creating new software, enhancing existing tools, or advising on research design. Our open-source software packaging, maintenance, and certification services will bridge the gap between individual researchers’ interests and the broader field’s need to make the software easy to use, up-to-date, and compliant with best practices. Training and mentoring programs will help researchers, research software developers, and IT professionals use, build, and support open-source research tools for the social and behavioral sciences. Finally, we will offer the most in-demand research tools as a service. Critical to all of these programs is our community building through this newsletter, conference workshops and presentations, and our own events.

If you are interested in following our journey, please subscribe to this newsletter. If you would like to be involved, have a comment, or know of resources we should be aware of, please contact us at info@bricenter.org.