We’re living in the big data age, surrounded by personal, scientific, and societal data that could help us understand the world, make decisions, and even forecast what comes next. But complex systems don’t fit neatly into human intuition, and we can’t “see” meaning in massive datasets without help. That’s where macroscopes come in: software tools designed to make complexity interpretable, explorable and allow users to “make sense” out of big, complex data. In this episode of the BioRevolution podcast, Andreas Horchler and Louise von Stechow have Katy Börner as a guest. Katy is Professor of Engineering and Information Science at Indiana University, leads the international Human Reference Atlas, and is one of the founders and curators behind the long-running Places & Spaces: Mapping Science exhibit. Together they discuss why visualization + interpretation + communication of data matter just as much as data collection—and how macroscopes can help us make sense of our complex world.

Find Katy here:

https://cns-iu.github.io/katy https://www.bihealth.org/en/notices/prof-dr-katy-boerner-connects-anatomy-and-disease-with-the-multiscale-human-reference-atlas https://www.linkedin.com/in/katy-b%C3%B6rner-a03837/

Read more about data visualization and macroscopes here: https://scimaps.org/macroscopes https://bigthink.com/hard-science/macroscopes/ https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1807180116 https://dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10.1145/1897852.1897871 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3093338.3106387 https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262014458/atlas-of-science/ https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262028813/atlas-of-knowledge/ https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262045957/atlas-of-forecasts/ https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262049924/atlas-of-macroscopes/ https://mcn.edu/resources/meet-the-macroscopes/ https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0894439316643050 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27032088/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24626916/ https://archive.org/details/macroscopenewwor0000rosn dagstuhl.de/21152/places-spaces/

Envisioning Intelligences exhibit call is at https://scimaps.org/call-for-submissions

Disclaimer: Louise von Stechow & Andreas Horchler and their guests express their personal opinions, which are founded on research on the respective topics, but do not claim to give medical, investment or even life advice in the podcast.

Learn more about the future of biotech in our podcasts and keynotes. Contact us here: scientific communication: https://science-tales.com/ Podcasts: https://www.podcon.de/ Keynotes: https://www.zukunftsinstitut.de/louise-von-stechow