Human Project' Study Will Ask 10,000 To Share Life's Data

Wanted: 10,000 New Yorkers interested in advancing science by sharing a trove of personal information, from cellphone locations and credit-card swipes to blood samples and lifechanging events. For 20 years.

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Researchers are gearing up to start recruiting participants from across the city next year for a study so sweeping it’s called “The Human Project.” It aims to channel different data streams into a river of insight on health, aging, education and many other aspects of human life.

“That’s what we’re all about: putting the holistic picture together,” says project director Dr. Paul Glimcher, a New York University neural science, economics and psychology professor.

There have been other “big data” health studies, and the National Institutes of Health plans to start full-scale recruitment as soon as this fall for a million-person project intended to foster individualized treatment.

But the $15 million-a-year Human Project is breaking ground with the scope of individual data it plans to collect simultaneously, says Dr. Vasant Dhar, editor-in-chief of the journal Big Data, which published a 2015 paper about the project.

“It is very ambitious,” the NYU information systems professor says.

Participants will be invited to join; researchers are tapping survey science to create a demographically representative group.