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 […]

On October 2, 2025, the SMART Master Lab Cohort 2.0 wrapped up with a poster presentation session. Over 10 weeks, our Master students worked closely with doctoral researchers and principal investigators before presenting their results to CRC members. The event opened at 14:30 with remarks from SMART Principal investigator Nadine Binder, followed by guided poster tours in which students presented […]

On September 26, 2025, researchers from SmallData came together for the first Female Scientist Retreat, organized by our Equity and Diversity spokesperson, Meropi Karakioulaki, Equity & Diversity student assistant, Pablo Zanon; our principal investigator, Nadine Binder; and systemic coach and organizational consultant, Susanne Marx, who also moderated the event. The retreat opened with an introductory […]

Last week, SMART doctoral researchers joined the first session of the Venture Scientist Club: From Research to Startup Concepts with Dr. Christoph Mårtensson. The session focused on how scientific insights can be shaped into early-stage startup ideas. Not through traditional business plans, but by applying venture-studio-inspired frameworks and asking bold “what if” questions. Key takeaways included: According […]

Our doctoral researchers Jelena Bratulić and Julia Hindel have taken part in a six-month research visit at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom. Jelena joined the Visual Geometry Group (VGG), working on training dynamics and applications of in-context learning. One of her goals is to understand how AI models generalize and what their working mechanisms are. Julia was hosted […]

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 […]