The Shape of Big Data

“The Shape of Big Data”

by professor Gunnar Carlsson, Department of Mathematics, Stanford University

Professor Gunnar Carlsson has made several contributions in the field of topology. He will discuss how this can be employed to tackle the increasing and complex amount of data in life science research. In addition to his academic contributions, he has founded Ayasadi Inc., putting these ideas into work.

   Abstract: There is a lot of discussion around "Big Data", which refers to the large and complex data sets currently being gathered about scientific, engineering, and commercial problems.  Although the size of the data is certainly a significant roadblock to the goal of obtaining useful information and knowledge from the data, the complexity of the data is often a more significant hurdle.  This means that there is a need for a new organizing principle and modeling mechanism, and it turns out that topology (the mathematical study of shape) can be used to provide such an organizing principle.  I will talk about these ideas, with many examples involving life sciences data.

The Volterra Lectures, named in honor of Vito Volterra, one of the first mathematical biologists, is a high-profile lecture series supported by Centre for Digital Life Norway (DLN). The current lecture is organized in collaboration with the DLN-project dCod 1.0 hosted by the Department of Biology, UiB. Everyone is welcome!