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The goal: investigate huge amounts of research data in new ways. The pool for teams: neuroscientists, data scientists, and software developers. The result: answering questions we didn’t even know we had.

Ever work in a place where you looked up to everyone there because they are experts at whatever they do and can pretty much solve any problem that arises? That’s what working at Exaptive is like. It’s a mix of expertise across various computer/data fields that works very well. Ever felt like you didn’t belong in a place like this?

Within a group, a team, a network, or organization that relies on members being connected to one another, connections can be based on a number of factors but almost always rely on the availability, awareness, and mobility of knowledge or information essential to the group. How does information move within a group or across groups? We are interested in identifying catalyzing actions that occur in group interactions to facilitate the ease of information and knowledge exchange and the establishment of new connections of members in the group. Research suggests that ideas have value to the extent that they can be shared with a new or different audience (Burt, 2004). This research also suggests that individuals who can establish new connections within a group bring competitive advantage to the development of new ideas within that group. In our experience, the purposeful translation of ideas to new audiences reduces serendipitous connections and takes advantage of certain individuals’ natural tendencies to broker these connections.

In the early 1990s, Burger King began an ad campaign that had a massive impact on consumers, especially in the United States. Anytime I hear the words, “Your way, right away,” I immediately hear the jingle that went along with it. The promise that you could have anything you wished -- and have it immediately -- was adopted in many sectors and pushed as good customer service, whether you’re in Human Resources and your customer is an employee, or you’re in Client Support and your customer is the client.

At some point in your life, you’ve found yourself describing a project you’ve worked on to a friend. They interject, “I’ve done something similar to this before,” and go on to describe a field or skill you didn’t know they were familiar with. You’ve just uncovered some dark assets about your friend: a set of skills or knowledge that were only discovered due to an accidental trigger.

In Stanley Kubrick’s famous film based on Arthur C. Clark’s book, 2001: A Space Odyssey, a mysterious black monolith appears on Earth millions of years before modern humans. It’s the classic “black box.” We don’t know who made it, what’s in it, or how it works, but it’s miraculous and powerful and somehow results in jumpstarting the entire evolution of humankind.

I am constantly amazed by the energy and momentum around data science. Only a few years ago, I would be met with a blank stare when I told someone I planned on going to grad school for machine learning. Today, there is no need for my “it's like computer science, linear algebra, and statistics had a combined love child” analogy as most people instantly respond with “Oh, like AI!”

Have you ever read the book Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck? The first part of the book is John Steinbeck talking about his lifelong affliction with wanderlust. I spent a few years living out of a VW camper van, indulging my own wanderlust affliction, so the book quickly claimed a special place in my heart. Steinbeck is such a skilled writer, and he describes the feeling -

When the United Nations released a report earlier this year that a catastrophic two-degree Celsius (3.6-degree Fahrenheit) rise in global average temperatures is expected to occur in the next decade, there was a media firestorm about the dire predictions. You know who wasn’t surprised? Climate scientists. (Read about the difference a half-a-degree can make.)

James Verdier: Hi, I'm James Verdier and welcome to the American Institute of Biological Sciences’ BioScience Talks which is a forum for integrating the life sciences. On the second Wednesday of each month we discuss the latest bioscience publications. And as a reminder if you'd like to read more point your browser to academic.oup.com/bioscience.