CyCAT Project

Welcome to the University of Sheffield's CyCAT project. This site hosts the research work and results conducted by the CyCAT team at the University of Sheffield.

The CyCAT project aims to investigate bias and transparency in search engines. This includes providing education materials for teachers and software developers to promote awareness of algorithmic bias in the Web and AI technologies. The Information School, University of Sheffield, is one of the project partners in CyCAT. Our work aims to investigate the extent of bias in search engines and how this bias should be informed to search engine users.

As a part of our research, we have conducted the following activities:

• Sessions on designing bias-aware search engines using a participatory approach
• Development of prototypes based on the selected designs of bias-aware search engines
• Evaluation of the designs of bias-aware search engines, as a part of the INF6060 module, Information School, University of Sheffield
and the CyCAT's Winter School on Bias and Transparency.
• Development of a bias-aware search engine prototype (v1.3)
• Evaluation of the usability of a bias-aware search engine prototype (on-going research)