On the trail of big data

A record number of visitors – 30,000 – turned out for the biannual science days hosted by the University of Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich. Over the course of three days, some 300 researchers welcomed visitors at 60 stands, 40 lectures, and 14 workshops covering topics like health, robotics and climate science as well as the linguistic and cultural sciences. People could watch and participate in live experiments and ask questions of the scientists on hand. The science cafés – where experts gave presentations and then discussed topics like artificial intelligence, financial investments, data journalism and gender in medicine – were filled to capacity. The weekend was also a chance to show how scientific findings can be transformed into hands-on business ideas.