Cancer Data Science Pulse

NCI recently hosted a two-day workshop with more than 600 developers, researchers, and data scientists from the United States, Canada, and the European Union. Participants addressed some of the challenges of removing personal information from medical images—a process called de-identification. This blog features highlights from the workshop.

Find out what a previous fellow has to say about her experience with data science in an NCI fellowship, and how she applied what she learned to her cancer research career.

Mr. Steve Friedman of NCI’s Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences’ Surveillance Research Program shares how his survivorship of testicular cancer impacted his decision to pursue the cancer data science field.

Meet Drs. Ajay Aggarwal and Anant Madabhushi, two grantees funded by NCI’s Center for Global Health’s Affordable Cancer Technologies (ACTs) Program. These ACTs-supported grantees are using artificial intelligence (AI) to develop tools that can be used in a variety of conditions and health systems around the world.

Common Data Elements (CDEs) are a key component of NCI’s semantics infrastructure. CDEs allow us to assign meaning to data in a way that’s predictable, consistent, and persistent across time. In this blog, CBIIT’s Ms. Denise Warzel and Dr. Gilberto Fragoso take a deep dive into CDEs and show how they help researchers define, map, and use data more efficiently.

If you can see it, you can treat it. In this blog, Dr. Baris Turkbey, senior clinician in NCI’s Molecular Imaging Branch, Center for Cancer Research, explores the field of theranostics. He describes how artificial intelligence and data are helping researchers “see” cancer in a new way, resulting in a more precise way of targeting cancer treatment.

CBIIT’s series on data visualizations continues with a look at visualizing genetic data in a three-dimensional (3D) format. Here, Dr. Michael Sierk, a contractor with Essential Software, Inc., and Dr. Daoud Meerzaman from CBIIT’s Computational Genomics and Bioinformatics Branch show how they create visualizations in 3D using a new tool called 3DVizSNP.

Dr. Vivian Ota Wang shares her perspectives on data bias and outlines ideas for making data more equitable, fair, and useful to the greatest number of people, all of which would benefit cancer research.

Hear from CBIIT’s Chief of the Clinical and Translational Research Informatics Branch as he gives advice on how to conduct a research project using data science and the value data science brings to supporting the cancer research community.

We spoke to an early-career cancer data scientist at NCI to get advice for anyone pursuing a career in data science. Hear the five things he’s discovered since receiving his doctorate, plus the experience he’s gained in the field.