Blog

At SmallData, we are passionate about advancing knowledge and promoting innovation in the field of small data. Our events play a key role in this mission by bringing together leading experts, pioneering researchers, and enthusiastic learners. Through our lectures, seminars, and workshops, we explore and develop small data research and methodologies. By subscribing to our […]

A new study by our doctoral researchers, Carola Heinzel & Lennart Purucker; as well as PIs, Frank Hutter & Peter Pfaffelhuber explores how TabPFN, foundation model, can be used to predict biogeographical ancestry (i.e. where a person’s ancestors likely came from) based on DNA data. This type of analysis is valuable in forensic genetics, for […]

We are proud to announce that our postdoctoral researcher, Nora Scherer, has won the 2025 Johann Peter Süßmilch Medal! This prize, established in 1986 by the GMDS to promote young scientists, recognizes outstanding scientific achievement in the fields of medical informatics, biometry, and epidemiology. The award was granted after her work on “Coupling metabolomics and exome sequencing […]

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 […]

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 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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]