A SMART Investment in Shared Language – Practicing Visual Communication in Science the Seyens Way

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 […]

Inspiring Collaborative Workshop on Designing Synthetic Benchmarks for Real-World Cohort Data

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 […]

Celebrating German Diversity Day: Equity & Diversity Quiz at SmallData

In celebration of German Diversity Day, SmallData hosted an Equity & Diversity Quiz as part of our internal Progress Seminar on May 27, 2025. The German Diversity Day is a nationwide initiative promoting awareness and action around diversity and inclusion — values we actively embrace in our CRC. Our special quiz session sparked an engaging competition among doctoral researchers, which encouraged reflection […]

Cracking Causality with SmallData!

On May 23, the CRC 1597 SmallData hosted a Workshop on “Causal Modeling with Small Data”, moderated by our PI Nadine Binder. Causal inference and modeling plays an important role across scientific fields and it’s of particular interest in medical related research, in which the lack of available data often poses a small data challenge. Julius […]

Kicking Off the SMART Tandem Lecture Series

On 16 May, we launched the first lecture in our new SMART Tandem Lecture Series 2025 – and it was a great success! The Series showcases interdisciplinary research by Principal Investigators from different disciplines. Each session features joint project presentations, updates, and insights into their collaborative process, including challenges and successes. The first lecture was […]

Blog

SmallData Contributes to Landmark Royal Society Report on Disability Technology

SmallData is proud to have contributed to a new executive report from the Royal Society on Disability Technology. The report outlines how data and digital tools can support independent, fulfilled lives. A key part of the report focuses on small data. Building on our Small Data Explainer, it explores small data research through the lens […]

Exploring Unified Approaches to SmallData: Harald Binder at freiburg.ai

Our SmallData Speaker, Harald Binder, held a presentation on May 22, 2025 for the freiburg.ai Meetup Group on the subject of “Unified Approaches to SmallData”. Freiburg.ai aims to connect machine learning enthusiasts from academia and industry, providing opportunities for technical discussions, networking and tech talks. A quick poll in the beginning indicated that half of the participants believed that biomedicine predominantly faces […]

Informal Equity & Diversity Networking Meeting

On June 5, we hosted an Informal Equity & Diversity Networking meeting, where SmallData members had the chance to gather over coffee or tea for exchanging related ideas and experiences. This session focused specifically on the topic of living and working internationally. Participants shared not only insights into their current work projects but also personal […]

Celebrating Excellence in Biostatistics: Nadine Binder receives Sabine-von-Kleist Habilitation Prize 2025

We are proud to share that our PI Nadine Binder, group leader at the Institute of General Practice at the Medical Center – University of Freiburg, has been awarded the 2025 Sabine-von-Kleist Habilitation Prize. This annual award by the Medical Faculty of the University of Freiburg honors outstanding early-career female scientists and supports their research path with […]

Our Mission

For tackling small data challenges, we focus on three key areas — similarity, transfer, and uncertainty — and establish a shared language for fusing methods across disciplines.

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.

Most Recent Publications

Administrative Manager

Marc Schumacher

Institute of Medical Biometry and Statistics,
Faculty of Medicine and Medical Center –
University of Freiburg