CS Prof. Joseph Hellerstein, and Assistant Profs. Aditya Parmeswaran and Sarah Chasins, are among the principal investigators of a new lab that received a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to make big datasets used by the criminal justice system more accessible to non-technical researchers.

The Effective Programming, Interaction, and Computation with Data (EPIC) Lab will create tools that utilize machine learning, program synthesis, and human-centered design, to improve the ability of public defenders, investigators and paralegals to research police misconduct, judicial decision-making, and related issues, for their cases, according to a statement from the university.

The tools will initially be used in San Francisco, Alameda and Sacramento.

[Image courtesy: UC Berkeley]