Informatics, Data Science Take Center Stage
Inaugural event launches multi-campus collaborative
Realizing that study teams were becoming more complex — increased data, bigger datasets, larger collaborations featuring individuals with diverse expertise — a team of Northwestern investigators sought to solve the dilemma of knowing who did what, when, and with what information.
“We developed StatWrap — which is free and open source — to be a non-invasive discovery software tool that can help teams document workflows and enhance the reproducibility of research,” Luke Rasmussen told a crowd of individuals standing in front of his research poster.
Rasmussen, a senior clinical research associate at the Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences (NUCATS) Institute and the Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine (I.AIM), was presenting at a collaborative informatics and data science event cohosted by NUCATS and I.AIM on July 23.
This event featured an afternoon of discovery with a goal of fostering collaboration. It strengthened connections across our different organizations, sparked new conversations, and set the stage for future events.”
Kristi Holmes, PhD, David Liebovitz, MD, and Allan Wu, MD, welcomed the audience of more than 100 to the launch of a new campuswide initiative that will continue to bring together experts and highlight the broad range of scientific efforts underway at Northwestern. More than 20 individuals presented research as part of the poster session.
“This was a great opportunity to break down some of the silos that exist between departments and disciplines, and I met so many people who practice informatics or data science that I had not interacted with before,” Rasmussen says. “Events like this will help build a true community of practice that will ultimately benefit all of the work we are doing here at Northwestern.”
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The highly interactive poster session allowed attendees to explore a range of research by colleagues from the university and its clinical partners. Ramon Lorenzo-Redondo, PhD, attended to support two members of his own lab who do computational work and presented posters.
“A big component of my lab involves bioinformatics and computational biology; thus, I thought this event was a great opportunity to show some of our work and learn what other Northwestern researchers are working on,” he said. “I think some of the conversations we had will lead to collaborations and improved data analysis. It was also a great opportunity for students to interact and learn.”
A big component of my lab involves bioinformatics and computational biology; thus, I thought this event was a great opportunity to show some of our work and learn what other Northwestern researchers are working on.”
Supported in part by the by the National Institutes of Health's National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, Grant Number UM1TR005121, Holmes expects the event’s success to serve as a catalyst.
“This inaugural event featured an afternoon of discovery with a primary goal of fostering collaboration,” she says. “It strengthened connections across our different organizations, sparked new conversations, and set the stage for future events and activities, including trainings, seminars, networking activities, and more.”
NUCATS and I.AIM value your opinion about health informatics and data science at the university. Even if you didn’t attend the July 23 event, please consider completing this five-minute survey to share your feedback.
Written by Roger Anderson
