In 2001, the STIET (Socio-Technical Infrastructure for Electronic Transactions) Doctoral Research and Training Program received a $3.5+ million IGERT grant from NSF to fund doctoral fellowships and a multidisciplinary program in the University of Michigan School of Information, School of Engineering, School of Business and Department of Economics. The STIET 1 grant funded 35 one- or two-year fellows over the next six years and initiated a weekly seminar series, twice yearly research workshops, and research resulting in over 90 student published articles in peer-reviewed journals, conferences and workshops. It is especially notable that nearly all of our students have had at least one peer-reviewed publication by the end of the second year of their PhD studies.

In 2007, STIET received a highly-competitive five-year grant renewal with major innovations including a new leading-edge multidisciplinary research program emerging from our prior work, called incentive-centered design; a new summer research team program for undergraduates from underrepresented groups to stimulate recruiting into graduate programs and to simultaneously enhance our PhD training; and an expansion of the research and training program to Wayne State University to disseminate our training success, and to strengthen our recruiting efforts.

In July 2008, founding STIET director Jeffrey Mackie-Mason became associate dean for academic affairs in the School of Information and SI Professor Yan Chen became STIET director.