On August 4, we launched the second cohort of the SMART Master Lab program, welcoming a new group of master’s students. The day opened with an introduction to the fundamentals of SmallData by Maren Hackenberg, early career researcher (ECR) from the Fusion Hub. Iván Acevedo then provided an overview of the SMART framework and the […]
The 47th Annual Conference of the International Society for Clinical Biostatistics (ISCB) will be held together with the 71st Annual Conference of the German Association for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology (GMDS) under the theme “Big Data, Small Data, Your Data: Transitions in the Age of Biomedical AI” from September 27 to October 1, 2026 in Freiburg, Germany. This […]
Last week, our SMART doctoral researchers & postdocs traveled to Paris to participate in a three-day summer school in collaboration with Gustave Roussy Institute & Sorbonne Université. The program focused on an interdisciplinary academic exchange and brought together researchers with backgrounds in biomedicine, statistics, mathematics and computer science. Day 1 – June 30, 2025 After arrival in Paris, […]
Clearer Communication Across Disciplines In interdisciplinary research, visuals help bridge gaps in understanding. Last week’s SMART workshop, “Shared Language through Visual Communication in Science”, led by Dr. Jernej Zupanc, focused on helping researchers communicate their work more clearly using effective visual strategies. Using the Seyens Method™, participants learned practical strategies for making their scientific ideas […]
We just concluded an energizing two-day workshop dedicated to designing synthetic benchmarks and diagnostic tools for complex, real-world cohort data. Co-organized by CRC 1597 Small Data, the STRATOS initiative, EVA4MII, and PrivateAIM for June 3-4, 2025, the workshop brought together experts from clinical research, epidemiology, and statistics. Together with the participants, they delved into how synthetic datasets and […]
At the end of July, four members of the CRC Small Data, made our way to Liverpool for the ISMB/ECCB 2025 conference. Over five full days, we joined around 2,500 researchers from across the globe for scientific discussions, presenting our research, and getting a sense of where computational biology is headed. The conference was packed […]
We are excited to announce the second half of our SmallData Seminar & Workshop Series for 2025! Note, some browsers do not display the inline PDF. Please click on the link to see the schedule. More details, including descriptions of each event, can be found here.
In collaboration with the Centre of Anthropology and Gender Studies and the Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine of the University of Freiburg, SmallData has created an exciting week-long-training focused on addressing gender-related data gaps in healthcare through the use of clinical data, AI, simulation, and gender-informed research approaches. The Autumn School is scheduled […]
The CRC 1597 SmallData met on July 18 for an exciting event – the introduction of our own chatbot, “Cubie“, during our “No Rules Science Exchange”. Following the recent advances in large language models, Cubie has been developed to make our small data results accessible to researchers from many disciplines, and also in the hopes […]
The recent progress in artificial intelligence has been facilitated by big data volumes and data-driven modeling approaches. However, there is a much larger number of applications where data analysis has to be performed with a relatively small number of observations. This can be addressed with knowledge-driven approaches, such as differential equations that incorporate biomedical domain knowledge, or by adapting data-driven approaches, e.g., neural networks, or ideally by combining the two types of approaches. When developing such methods for small data settings, three key areas need to be addressed: similarity, transfer, and uncertainty. This enables combination of similar observations, e.g., from different hospitals, and more generally transfer of information, e.g., between genome screening and mechanistic models, while quantifying and reducing uncertainty. For creating comprehensive solutions that fuse such exciting emerging ideas, our Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 1597 'Small Data' (SmallData), which started on October 1st, 2023, integrates contributions from computer science, mathematics, and statistics/systems modeling, with input from biomedicine. Our doctoral program SMART is key for establishing a shared language across those disciplines. We are located in Freiburg, Germany, with external partners in Bochum and Greifswald. For more details see our scientific framework and interdisciplinary approach, or have a look at the individual research projects.
Institute of Medical Biometry and Statistics,
Faculty of Medicine and Medical Center –
University of Freiburg
