Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy

When Heinz College was founded five decades ago, Dean William Cooper had a vision of educating future leaders who would positively impact the world through “intelligent action." Today, our faculty and students continue our mission by pursuing socially relevant research and management solutions that effectively blend TECHNOLOGY, DATA, CREATIVITY, and LEADERSHIP for maximum impact. 

The next generation of leaders must deeply understand this critical point of intersection:

People, policy, and technology. The connections among the three define our time, and will continue to shape the future of humankind.

At Heinz College, we’ve understood this since our founding. Our first Dean, William W. Cooper, had a vision of educating students for "intelligent action,” and this is still our primary objective.

In our educational programs, we accomplish this through a foundation of data analytics, technology, and experiential learning. Regardless of whether you come here to study Arts Management or Information Security or anything in between, your experience will be built on these elements.

Our research programs are best described as data-intensive social science. Our economists, statisticians, operations researchers, computer scientists, and management experts sit side by side, collaborating constantly and not sitting in traditional departmental silos. For this reason, they are able to approach complex societal problems in an altogether different way. The future of work, the future of mobility, the loss of privacy, seismic shifts in entertainment—these are the problems of our age. These are the problems on our minds.