Information is all around us. Some of it we can detect with our senses, some of it we process to create language, books, and art, and some of it we structure through the maths and sciences.

But what about everything else? If organizing information makes it more valuable, how do we organize more of it?

That’s a question that Dr. César Hidalgo has been asking his entire life.

As a young boy growing up in Chile, his idea of fun was taking notes on the bugs in his backyard so that he could categorize their characteristics. Or helping the local librarian to catalog the books on the shelves. He even classified his classmates, and kept a book of “field notes” in hopes of understanding why the people around him acted as they did. 

Despite not having many examples of scientists in his community, a career in science felt like the natural fit for someone so obsessed with turning raw information into useful knowledge. How else can you get paid to make sense of the world?

Figuring out which science, on the other hand, was a bigger challenge. He explored astronomy and then physics, but neither served his ultimate goal of better understanding people and systems.

Finally, he discovered the field of “complex systems”, which was perfectly designed for the kind of person who categorizes backyard bugs and classifies their classmates. He could use mathematical principles and large datasets — often called big data — to identify patterns and relationships in real world networks, like economies, governments, and populations. Patterns that might otherwise have been missed. 

Dr. Hidalgo now travels the world creating new ways to turn data into knowledge and to visualize that knowledge in beautiful and interactive ways, so that more people can put it to use. He works with global leaders to help them use untapped data to solve some of society’s biggest problems.

In other words, Dr. Hidalgo finds ways to capture raw information and turn it into usable knowledge, unlocking the answers that may have been right in our backyards all along.