We are living in an age of “big data”. Insights from big data touch almost every part of our lives—from the way we navigate in our cars to the way we shop. Big data has also arrived in biodiversity research due to rapid change in the types and volume of data that researchers can use to ask and answer their scientific questions. The Data Science Lab works with Smithsonian researchers to use big data techniques, such as deep machine learning, to generate insights from their data, whether they are derived from genome sequencing, ecological sensors, or mass digitization of museum objects. These techniques require computational expertise in hardware and software to both build new algorithms and to implement the emerging tools that are developed outside the Smithsonian.