Around 5 years ago, Aviv Regev, PhD, realized that it would soon be possible to map all of the cell types in the human body. An atlas of cells across all tissues and organs would undoubtedly advance the scientific community’s understanding of biology and disease and open doors to new treatments. It was a hugely ambitious undertaking that had never been attempted before, but Regev, a computational and systems biologist, knew the technology to produce the Human Cell Atlas (HCA) had arrived.