Today’s data generation and analysis environment is changing rapidly as the lure of technologies provide new opportunities to laboratory scientists. From physicians seeking rapid translation to the bedside, to environmentalists seeking new paradigms to understand the biome - large scale data generation is everywhere. How do we overcome the challenges of curation, management, interpretation and sharing of these data in the new multidisciplinary environment? One key approach is to leverage the expertise inherent in existing systems - bringing together tools and paradigms that work in subfields, and making them work together for the consortium. We will discuss the stem cell discovery engine. The approach brings together leading experts in stem cell biology, molecular profiles from stem cell systems, and seeks to combine data from diverse platforms under the unifying theme of common biology. We explore the use of gene lists and canonical pathways as a supervisor - and present pathway fingerprinting as a molecular approach to a broader problem. We explore how the community seeks to interact with its data - under the glare of reality.