Yconnections

Yconnections is a cross-disciplinary collaboration platform designed to map and facilitate professional connections among researchers, institutions, and industry partners. It uses a graph-based data model to encode individuals, projects, affiliations, funding sources, and events, enabling users to discover collaborators and opportunities through relational queries and recommendations. The platform emphasizes consent-based data sharing and transparent privacy controls.

Initially launched in 2018 by a consortium of universities and research labs, Yconnections ran pilot programs in physics and computer science and gradually expanded to other domains. It is maintained by a non-profit coalition and an advisory board drawn from academia and industry.

Users create profiles, list areas of expertise, ongoing projects, and interests. The system offers project boards, collaboration suggestions, funding alerts, event notices, and secure messaging. A recommendation engine uses graph analytics to propose potential matches while preserving privacy.

The platform relies on a graph database and APIs; it uses privacy-preserving analytics, differential privacy for analytics, and federated identity; supports OAuth; and includes an open API for data integration.

Adoption has grown in universities and research institutes; advocates cite increased interdisciplinary work and faster matching of opportunities. Critics raise concerns about data quality, bias in recommendations, and control over data sharing.