A competition is underway to develop new algorithms to quantify the gravitational lensing effect of the mysterious dark matter that pervades the Universe. The competition known as GREAT08 (GRavitational lEnsing Accuracy Test 2008) has recently been opened up to the public and aims at developing methods for understanding the nature and distribution of dark energy. As noted in a short blurb about the competition in the 31 October 2008 issue of Science, new image analysis and machine learning techniques coming out of GREAT08 could be key to the analysis of the billions of galaxies that future surveys will catalog in the coming years. The site also contains a very nice and informative screencast.
Posted by John Rachlin 