The Kavli HUMAN Project will collect data at an unprecedented scale—from the lives of 10,000 New Yorkers.
Brian Resnick reports: "Paul Glimcher is on the verge of launching an absurdly ambitious project in social science. The concept is simple, but the scope is spectacularly broad. Over the next few years, he and his team are going to recruit 10,000 New Yorkers and track everything about them for decades."
Everything, in this case, includes "full genome data, medical records, diet, credit card transactions, physical activity, personality test scores, intelligence test scores, social interactions, neighborhood characteristics, loan records, time spent on email, educational achievement, employment status, sleep, GPS location data, blood work, and stool samples," according to Resnick.
Glimcher's project is known as the Kavli HUMAN Project, and it will test the capabilities of data collection on a new scale for the field of social science. The project will track the cohort of New Yorkers through a "data-siphoning smartphone app" in addition to physical evaluations.
Resnick's coverage of the project includes an interview with Glimcher, which touches on the influence of research in the field of astronomy on the work of the Kavli HUMAN Project, the potential implications of the research for the future study of social sciences, and the potential of big data to transform out understanding of how humans interact with each other and the world.
Read the full story: This audacious study will track 10,000 New Yorkers' every move for 20 years
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