A Tension: Growing Pains as Research and Researchers Adopt and Adapt to Cloud and Commons

In this talk, Dr. James Lacey will describe the choices the cancer research community should consider and the questions they need to ask when transitioning their research projects to a cloud-based ecosystem.

Broad and early adoption of cloud computing like NCI’s Cancer Research Data Commons (CRDC) has the potential to accelerate cancer research and to eliminate some of today’s most pressing “pain points” involved in data access, use, tracking, sharing, and reporting. This essential transition also brings with it a major shift in how cancer researchers conduct their research. Dr. Lacey will discuss this new way of approaching research questions and the importance of considering the full data lifecycle right from the start.

Dr. Lacey is the lead principal investigator of the City of Hope’s California Teachers Study, a large epidemiological study on the incidence of breast cancer. In 2016, this landmark study moved to the cloud, giving Dr. Lacey a unique perspective on some of the unanticipated, underrecognized, and unintended consequences of transitioning an active, real-world, and large-scale NCI-funded research project to the cloud and the CRDC framework. He will discuss the lessons learned in making this transition and the decisions research teams need to consider to ensure they leverage all the benefits of a cloud environment.