Sign in or Join FriendFeed
FriendFeed is the easiest way to share online. Learn more »
Martin Fenner
SciBar Camp: Keynote by Sean Mooney; Biomedical Research in the Age of Cyberinfrastructure
Keynote at an unconference is difficult, an untalk? Will take about why he thinks scientists don't use the internet. - Martin Fenner
hi martin :) - Pedro Beltrao
Is all the discussion on Twitter? - Martin Fenner
seems to be quite a lot over there at #scbPA but we know where the quality is... - Cameron Neylon
Scientists are certainly all connected: email, manuscripts and news on the internet - Martin Fenner
but integration a problem, dissemination of data is a challenge - Cameron Neylon
Most of the tools that his group builds are web-based - Martin Fenner
For the majority of scientists, there is no interest in using tools like Twitter or Facebook. - Martin Fenner
streaming video at http://bit.ly/uTeV4 - not from me at the moment - Cameron Neylon
His groups built a biorepository inventory management software, community portal software, bioinformatic analysis tools (often web-based). - Martin Fenner
need to get lots of citations of tools to keep getting funding - Cameron Neylon
Individual tools are not in a vacuum, they should be connected together as cyperinfrastructure. - Martin Fenner
lots of web based tools but individual tools are not in a vacuum. The collection of resources is key and how to combine them together - Cameron Neylon
nasa space programme as an analogy for building an integrated cyberinfrastructure - Cameron Neylon
each part can be tightly specificed for e.g. shuttle but harder to push that kind of integration specification for funded research projects - Cameron Neylon
Difference in space program: NASA clearly says what they want, different in bioinformatic tools. - Martin Fenner
Examples of integration (cyberinfrastructure) tools, CaBIG, NCBI, BIRN, homw-grown... - Martin Fenner
talking about different big programs like https://cabig.nci.nih.gov/ and http://www.nbirn.net/ - Pedro Beltrao
Administrattors always want "big picture", e.g. asset management, researchers want data analysis. This leads to two kinds of projects. - Martin Fenner
researchers totally focussed on specific problems. Administrators have other concerns, want "asset management" - Cameron Neylon
administrators often misjudge their needs for scientist's needs. Scientists often mistake today's need for tomorrow's needs - Cameron Neylon
NIH has 27 institutes, they all have their own approach to informatics. - Martin Fenner
Traditional approach: domain specific coordination - Martin Fenner
traditional approach is to build a specific system or portal for a consortium of researchers - Cameron Neylon
Data sharing was key to PGRN's value - but not the last place the data might go - Cameron Neylon
horribly complicated workflow with lots of different research foci - Cameron Neylon
i guess this approach creates isolated domain knowledge that is hard to integrate with other domain specific projects - Pedro Beltrao
Need to collect disparate data to pull everything together and then push on to the mandated site - Cameron Neylon
Management needs: secure platform, database eneabled - Martin Fenner
Question: are researchers actually using the web-based tools to collect data? - Martin Fenner
and every lab is probably doing something different to the workflow they say they are using... - Cameron Neylon
but if you designed better to start with (but need heavy resourcing to do this) then it might be - Cameron Neylon
CaTissue is great tool for tissue sampling, was built from the beginning to work for many different situations. - Martin Fenner
Current challenges: connect to bigger projects, next generatin suequencing, etc. - Martin Fenner
pedro asks a good question - is there any mandate for annotation or tagging? Answer from Sean: No, there is money available to support but no compulsion - Cameron Neylon
Big mover in the next 10 years: funding for translational research centers (CTSA). - Martin Fenner
mandates for CTSAs to work together but no idea how that is going to happen in practice - Cameron Neylon
Ask for a laundry list of informatics functionality. Sean "do you know how much this is going to cost" Admin: "No, how much do you need" Sean: "Well all of the money available..." - Cameron Neylon
ability to embed applications in a virtual machine in the web portal. - Cameron Neylon
hub doesn't directly integrate scientific data or handle group collaboration - Cameron Neylon
personal information actually put into their hub implementation by administrative assistants - Cameron Neylon
integration across CTSA informatics projects is not happening, everyone is trying to do everything themselves - Cameron Neylon
And now, the Web2 bit! - Cameron Neylon
popular with adminstrators and funders I think - possibly developers, less so with scientists... - Cameron Neylon
NIH has started to put more grant money into social networking tools, e.g. with the CTSAs mentioned above. - Martin Fenner
but sharepoint very popular in government - never really understood why I have to admit - Cameron Neylon
Challenges faced in Mooney lab: Creation of collaborative documents: manuscripts, proposals, management of datasets, discussion. - Martin Fenner
Laboratre solves problems in Mooney lab. - Martin Fenner
Applications can be embedded in Laboratree using OpenSocial. - Martin Fenner
Web portals for science suffer from under-use. - Martin Fenner
Successful tools are simple. - Martin Fenner
Start with an existing community. - Martin Fenner
Discussion: Open Science is important, but is a long way to go (publishing as example). - Martin Fenner
Discussion: will HTML be used instead of .pdf or .doc? Is a paradigm shift, particular difficult in clinical medicine. - Martin Fenner
One reason to use OpenSocial for Laboratree is the hope that people would build applications that can easily be reused. - Martin Fenner
Discussion: a lot of our data from a years ago is probably no longer relevant to what we do today. - Martin Fenner
Darn, would have loved to be at this session. Some day I will actually make it to one of these - Deepak Singh
I posted the keynote as a video in three parts on my blog: http://bit.ly/2G0DE - Naomi Most
Thanks Martin, Pedro, Cameron, Duncan, and Naomi! With so many notes and videos, it is almost like being there :) - Mike Chelen