Women In Data Science

Data science and genetics are closely linked and have been for some time. But now, data science is playing an even larger role in genetics, a trend that is prompting researchers to look hard at their ethical responsibilities, says Chiara Sabatti, a professor of biomedical data science and statistics at Stanford University. As is the case in many other fields, geneticists have access to much more data than in the past, and because it is digitized, it can be mined. “Scientists rely on statisticians to mine this data and help them formulate hypotheses,” Sabatti said during an interview recorded for this year’s Women in Data Science podcast at Stanford. Truly understanding and interpreting this data correctly will become increasingly important for the public good as the relationship between accessibility and privacy continues to grow, she noted. Because there is such a wealth of data, there are potentially thousands of hypotheses that could be explored in some cases, an obviously unworkable situation. Data scient