Across every field and every human experience, we are amassing enormous amounts of data. But in a sea of information, finding useful patterns—and new discoveries—is a challenge.

Whether it’s consumer data, a digitized manuscript, or a DNA sequence, we need to comb the ones and zeros to decipher what is mere noise and what is truly meaningful.

Yale’s data science initiative brings together mathematicians, computer scientists, and data scientists to develop new methods that will uncover answers that, because of sheer scale and complexity, were never before accessible. With implications beyond science, this far-reaching effort will have profound impacts on a range of disciplines and sectors of society.

Satellite image courtesy of Karen Seto, the Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanization Science, Yale School of the Environment.