News

If you have experience providing expert program management and advisory services on semantic infrastructure programs, consider joining the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI’s) Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology (CBIIT) as a Program Director of Semantic Infrastructure. Apply by Wednesday, August 26, 2020.

Harmony can mean different things to different professions, but in the new NCI Cancer Research Data Commons (CRDC) video, musical harmony and data harmonization combine to show how the CRDC is helping to create a harmonious data ecosystem for better clinical outcomes.

NIH recently released a notice encouraging NIH-supported clinical programs and researchers to adopt and use U.S. Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI) standards. USCDI classifications will ensure clinical data adhere to a unified standard, allowing researchers to more easily compare different data sets and enabling more in-depth analysis to further scientific discovery.

Drs. Daoud Meerzaman of NCI’s Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology (CBIIT) and Barbara K. Dunn of NCI’s Biometry Research Group recently served as Guest Editors for a special virtual issue of the journal, Frontiers in Oncology. This collection of articles shows how ‘omics data are helping scientists to better understand the prevention, detection, and treatment of cancer. The issue explores the full range of ‘omics findings, from identifying biomarkers for diagnosing and treating cancer, to uncovering the mechanisms for disease.

NCI Director Dr. Ned Sharpless shared an update on the Childhood Cancer Data Initiative (CCDI) and how it is leveraging data science and data sharing to rapidly improve treatments for childhood, adolescent, and young adult cancers.

The Metadata Automation DREAM Challenge has closed! Learn more about the winners and how they plan to collaborate together to improve their algorithms and brainstorm future approaches to automating metadata annotation.

The NIH Common Fund’s Harnessing Data Science for Health Discovery and Innovation in Africa (DS-I Africa) Program has published four Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOAs). In addition, the corresponding DS-I Africa Virtual Symposium Platform will be open July–November 2020 to provide networking tools and online events to participants.

Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC) researchers shared the results of their first crowd-sourced NCI-CPTAC DREAM Proteogenomic Challenge. In this community-based, collaborative contest, participants developed computational algorithms to predict protein abundance and phosphoprotein levels.

The NCI Cancer Research Data Commons’ Genomic Data Commons (GDC) has released a new set of data from NCI programs and partners including the Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC) and the Human Cancer Models Initiative (HCMI).

CBIIT Director Dr. Tony Kerlavage participated in the National Cancer Policy Forum's workshop "Applying Big Data to Address the Social Determinants of Health in Oncology." The proceedings, which were recently published, illustrate how Dr. Kerlavage and other leading experts are working to identify novel ways to collect, curate, analyze, and use social determinants of health (SDOH) data to address health disparities related to cancer research and outcomes.