AI, Biodiversity & Ecosystem Conservation, Climate Science & Mitigation, Data Science, Eco Tourism, Environmental Education & Stewardship, Marine & Biological Conservation, Resource Conservation & Policy, Social Impact
2012, 2010
United States
University of California San Diego; University of California, Berkeley and University of California, San Diego; Rakuten Intelligence; Brown University; Pacific Ecoinformatics and Computational Ecology Lab; Vibrant Data Inc.; Sierra Nevada Research Institute, Yosemite Field Station; Oregon State University; University of California, Berkeley; U.S. Geological Survey (USGS); National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS); TED Conferences; Vibrant Data Labs
Dr. Eric L. Berlow is the CEO of Vibrant Data Labs, a social impact data science company focused on building open-source tools for tracking funding flows to climate mitigation and resilience efforts. With a background in ecology and complexity science, he collaborates with various partners and collaborators to address complex problems like climate change. Dr. Berlow's work involves leveraging data and computation for evidence-based stewardship of nature, with a focus on finding simplicity within complexity. Additionally, he hosts creative work gatherings at Swall Institute, where he has facilitated collaborations with artists, scientists, and activists. // Vibrant Data Labs utilizes machine learning, natural language processing, and computational statistics to enhance the impact of climate funders. Their tools convert complex data into accessible formats, highlighting funding gaps in various capital types. They offer free public tools to map climate investments, custom insights for climate finance leaders, and collaborate with fund managers to develop impactful investment strategies. The organization aims to amplify the collective impact of climate funding through data tools and insights. // Vibrant Data Labs is a social impact data science group that applies creative data synthesis, computational statistics, machine learning, network theory, and data visualization to (hopefully) empower evidence-based decisions that benefit humanity (and other species too).We focus on using Data Science to:• see the big picture and provide context• prioritize resources to maximize impact• test assumptions and ask the right questions• augment human intelligence and increase human agencyWe explicitly avoid using Data Science to:• identify and exploit human vulnerabilities• secretly persuade opinions• automate solutions to the wrong problem // Collaborating with Rich Williams to develop tools for synthesizing and visualizing themes in the scientific literature. These tool are based on open-source projects (openmappr.org and tag2network) that enable the creation and interactive exploration of document networks. See the linked publication for an example of that work. // Acquired by Rakuten Inc. (June 2016). Vibrant Data's data discovery platform leverages machine learning to see and understand, not just predict, patterns in complex networks and high dimensional data. A version of that tool (openmappr) and the basic algorithms (tag2network) have since open-sourced - see https://openmappr.org // I've had the wonderful privilege of being part of the TED Fellows community since 2010. To learn more about the program or apply, see the link below. // This collaborative research focused on leveraging data and computation (including machine learning) to support evidence-based conservation policy in Yosemite National Park. Focal areas included: Alpine meadow ecology, conservation ecology, threatened species, and climate change. // I helped found and directed this University of California environmental science center inside Yosemite National Park - the first of it's kind in the history of Yosemite. I helped develop and implement the vision of this center to facilitate synergistic links between science and education to help inform data-driven management of natural ecosystems. // Collaborative research on food webs and complex ecological networks. // Research on ecology, conservation, and evidence-based management of alpine meadow ecosystems of Sierra Nevada Wilderness Areas. // The nature of collaboration is interdisciplinary and exponential. Ecological networks scientist Eric Berlow works with other TED Fellows to map out the collaborations that occur in their network. Through this, a diversity of ideas from different disciplines, places, races and ethnicities is cultivated and displayed. TEDArchive presents previously unpublished talks from TED conferences. Filmed at TED2014 - // This was a collaborative project with the wonderful team at Quid. From TED.com: "What do 24,000 ideas look like? Ecologist Eric Berlow and physicist Sean Gourley apply algorithms to the entire archive of TEDx Talks, taking us on a stimulating visual tour to show how ideas connect globally." // #WETHEDATA is a collaborative effort to help spark a new Personal Data Economy that works for everyday people by focusing innovation on core challenges at the root of this complex problem. Vibrant Data Labs' primary contribution to this project was the network analysis of collective expert input to identify 4 'grand challenge' areas that, if solved together, could have the most far-reaching positive impact. // From TED.com: Ecologist Eric Berlow doesn't feel overwhelmed when faced with complex systems. He knows that more information can lead to a better, simpler solution. Illustrating the tips and tricks for breaking down big issues, he distills an overwhelming infographic on U.S. strategy in Afghanistan to a few elementary points. // This was a collaborative project to with Bethanie Maples and Srini Kadamati to explore the thematic landscape of all SciFi books published in the past century. The interactive visualization mentioned in this Wired story is here: http://app.openmappr.org/play/100YrsOfSciFi More details:All Sci Fi novels published since 1900 were scraped from Good Reads, and for each novel, all reader comments, plot descriptions, and user-generated tags were compiled. Keywords and concepts were added to each novel by parsing the text described above and mapping them to a curated dictionary of SciFi keywords and concepts. 2,633 novels published since 1990 had at least 50 reviews and contained at least one keyword from the keyword corpus.After keyword enhancement, a book network was created by linking novels if they shared similar keyword signatures. Network clusters identify Keyword Themes - or groups of similar books that are labeled by the top 5 most commonly shared keywords in the group. The network was generated using the open source python 'tag2network' package, and visualized here using 'openmappr''. The scripts for analyzing this dataset are available at https://github.com/ericberlow/SciFiNOTE - This visualization performs best in Chrome and Safari browsers full screen - and is not optimized for the small screens of mobile devices. // Collaboration with 100Kin10.org and Kumu.io to map the complex relationships between root problems for shortages in PK-12 STEM teachers. 104 root causes were identified by thousands of stakeholders. We then surveyed 100's of experts to compile over 35,000 votes on what root causes, if solved, influence which other root causes. Network analysis was used to identify potential structural 'keystone' problems with high leverage. Re-sampling was used to evaluate consequences of errors in the voting data. // HackingCreativity, a collaboration with Red Bull High Performance, is the largest study of Creative Styles in history. Ongoing... // Einstein once said, "If I had an hour to save the world, I'd spend 55 minutes defining the problem, and 5 minutes on the solution." Most big problems are made of many smaller problems that all influence one another - solving one may solve (or cause) others. How do we define the winning problems to solve? This video describes an ecological network approach developed by Vibrant Data Labs in collaboration with Intel Labs and Brainvise for #WETHEDATA (wethedata.org) to gather collective expert input about the network structure of a problem, and boil it down to a few core principles for catalyzing change. The example focuses on the complex problem of sparking a new Personal Data Economy that actually works for people and not against them. This work was presented at the World Economic Forum in Davos 2013 to help set the agenda on personal data. // Over 35 peer-reviewed research publications in ecology, ecological networks, and conservation science - including papers in Nature, Science, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. One paper was awarded ISI's "Top 20 most cited ecology/evolution paper of the decade" (1998-2008). Another was awarded ISI's "Fast moving fronts". Numerous others are on ISI's "Highly Cited" lists. Total Citations >10,000, H-Index = 23, i10-index = 28. // University of California San Diego; University of California, Berkeley and University of California, San Diego; Rakuten Intelligence; Brown University; Pacific Ecoinformatics and Computational Ecology Lab; Vibrant Data Inc.; Sierra Nevada Research Institute, Yosemite Field Station; Oregon State University; University of California, Berkeley; U.S. Geological Survey (USGS); National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS); TED Conferences; Vibrant Data Labs // Eric Berlow is an ecological networks scientist with a strong background in ecology, conservation, and evidence-based management. He is the co-founder of Vibrant Data Labs, a social impact data science group that leverages creative data synthesis, computational statistics, machine learning, network theory, and data visualization to empower evidence-based decisions for the betterment of humanity and the environment. Eric's work focuses on using data science to provide context, maximize impact, ask the right questions, and augment human intelligence. He has collaborated on various projects, including developing tools for synthesizing and visualizing themes in scientific literature, contributing to the Personal Data Economy initiative, and mapping complex relationships in STEM education. With over 35 peer-reviewed research publications in prestigious journals, Eric's expertise is widely recognized in the field of ecology and conservation science. // My grand hope is to help *overcome myopia* and encourage people to embrace the Big Picture View in order to successfully and tackle complex problems facing humanity. My current focus is on climate change - and the question that drives me is: "How can we solve the climate crisis - on the first try?" My goal is to help maximize the collective impact of many independent funders working to address this complex existential threat to human civilization - a problem that we only have one chance to solve before it's too late. // Dr. Eric Berlow is a data scientist and ecological networks expert known for his work in leveraging data and computation to address complex environmental challenges, particularly in the realm of climate change. As the CEO of Vibrant Data Labs, he leads a team that develops open-source tools using machine learning, computational statistics, and data visualization to track funding flows for climate mitigation and resilience efforts. Dr. Berlow's expertise lies in simplifying complex data to provide actionable insights for evidence-based stewardship of nature. Through collaborations with various partners, he aims to amplify the collective impact of climate funding by identifying funding gaps and developing impactful investment strategies. With a background in ecology and conservation, Dr. Berlow's work is underpinned by a commitment to maximizing the impact of data-driven decision-making for the betterment of humanity and the environment. // Ecologist, Data scientist // Eric Berlow, PhD, is an ecologist and network scientist who specializes in not specializing. A TED Senior Fellow and Adjunct Professor at UC Berkeley, Eric is internationally recognized for his research on ecological complexity and for creative approaches to simplifying complex problems. His publications in Science, Nature, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science and elsewhere have been recognized among the Top 1% Most Highly Cited Papers in the field. His two TED talks on TED.com have together received over 1.1 million views.
Eric was the founding director of the University of California's first environmental science center inside Yosemite National Park, where he continues to develop data-driven approaches to managing natural ecosystems.
Eric co-founded Vibrant Data with two other TED Fellows to empower collaborative exploration of complex networks. Their current projects include mapping the network structure of the Syrian conflict and the ecology of human creativity // Dr. Eric L. Berlow is a community ecologist and network scientist and CEO of Vibrant Data Labs - a social impact data science company developing an open-source framework for tracking the ecosystem of money flowing to climate solutions. Eric previously co-founded a visual data interface company which was acquired by Rakuten in 2016 - where he then led data product innovation.
Berlow was the founding director of the University of California’s first science institute in Yosemite National Park, where he co-led efforts to leverage data and machine learning for species conservation policy.
Berlow is internationally recognized for his research on ecological complexity – with articles in Nature, Science, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. His two talks on TED.com focus on simplifying complexity and finding hidden patterns in complex data.
Berlow is currently an Emerson Collective Climate Fellow - and previously was awarded a TED Fellowship, a TED Senior Fellowship, an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship, and a National Science Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship. He was named one of the Top 100 Creatives by Origin Magazine and named one of ImpactAlpa’s “Agents of Impact”. Berlow holds a B.A. from Brown University and a PhD in Ecology from Oregon State University. // What do 24,000 ideas look like? Ecologist Eric Berlow and physicist Sean Gourley apply algorithms to the entire archive of TEDx Talks, taking us on a stimulating visual tour to show how ideas connect globally. // Ecologist Eric Berlow doesn't feel overwhelmed when faced with complex systems. He knows that more information can lead to a better, simpler solution. Illustrating the tips and tricks for breaking down big issues, he distills an overwhelming infographic on U.S. strategy in Afghanistan to a few elementary points. // Dr. Eric Berlow is a data scientist and ecological networks expert known for his work in leveraging data and computation to address complex environmental challenges, particularly in the realm of climate change. As the CEO of Vibrant Data Labs, he leads a team that develops open-source tools using machine learning, computational statistics, and data visualization to track funding flows for climate mitigation and resilience efforts. Dr. Berlow's expertise lies in simplifying complex data to provide actionable insights for evidence-based stewardship of nature. Through collaborations with various partners, he aims to amplify the collective impact of climate funding by identifying funding gaps and developing impactful investment strategies. With a background in ecology and conservation, Dr. Berlow's work is underpinned by a commitment to maximizing the impact of data-driven decision-making for the betterment of humanity and the environment. // Ecologist, Data scientist // interdisciplinary collaboration, sustainability, education, biodiversity, paper, led, data, tourism, machine learning, wilderness, finance, geospatial analysis, research, food webs, resilience, activism, ecosystem, climate, data and analytics, environmental education, sustainable development , resource conservation, natural resources, policy, species, stewardship and restoration, mitigation, stem, oceans, open source, data visualization, mobile phones, data analysis, climate change, data-driven, data science, eco tourism, environment, voting, network theory, philanthropy, climate mitigation, teachers, conservation, social impact, climate finance, big data, nature, science, food, environmental conservation, complex networks, biological conservation, restoration, artificial intelligence, ecology, complexity, ecosystems, marine ecology, endangered species // Bishop|USA|France|Paris|California|Berkeley|United States
Bishop|USA|France|Paris|California|Berkeley|United States
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