A Dating App for Science, Not for Profit

For many, college is a time for figuring out who you want to be, as well as who you want to be with. But finding a romantic partner while juggling coursework, new friends, and extracurriculars may be a struggle for many students at U-M and other universities. Traditional dating apps flood users with matches, inducing mindless swiping and decision fatigue.

Enter Revel, a U-M–specific dating app developed by Elizabeth Bruch, an associate professor of sociology, and Amie Gordon, assistant professor of psychology. It’s rooted in their scholarship. The app, they point out, is for science—not for profit.

Gordon’s research concentrates on romantic relationships and the reasons why some succeed and some fail. In 2022, she came across a press release about Bruch, whose research is on dating markets and the strategies people use to find partners online. The two met in person and discussed the possibility of developing an interdisciplinary research study that featured a dating app specifically for college students and oriented around discovery—both scientific discovery about compatibility and chemistry and personal discovery for students who are learning what they want out of their relationships and how to get it. And Revel was born.

They hope to use the app to solve some of the enduring mysteries of relationship science. Despite decades of research, relationship scientists still don’t really know why some people “click” while others don’t or why some relationships endure while others end.

Importantly, the app is designed to offer insights to users and scientists alike. “Why can’t we have a Fitbit for our dating life?” Bruch jokes. “There’s a need for greater connectivity and ways to more effectively cut through the opacity of dating.”

Ultimately, the goal is to help students demystify the frequently frustrating world of college dating by giving them tools to understand their own experiences.

Revel, which is available only to active students at Michigan, began beta testing with students in December 2024. Gordon and Bruch were excited to see that, after less than two months, their small pool of testers had swiped over 8,000 times and made more than 150 matches—with some even meeting in person. The Revel app has a few unique features, including surveys that give users the opportunity to share their experiences directly with the research team, the ability to block someone by their U-M uniqname, and a “show me again later” function that allows users to revisit potential matches.

Having worked with other scientists throughout their academic careers, Bruch and Gordon are eager to embark on a new sort of collaboration with their student users, whose data is fully scrubbed before it is analyzed. “The students are sharing their perspectives and experiences,” Bruch says, “and we want to use that knowledge to give them a dating app tailored to their needs and goals.” In the next few years, they hope to use what they learn to develop a separate app for U-M alums to connect with one another. They are exploring funding opportunities to continue and expand their project.

The name for the app came from thinking about innovation with a sense of festivity and positivity toward the future. “That’s what we want to capture,” Gordon says. “Where dating meets discovery.”

Illustration by Becky Sehenuk Waite