About the series
Abstract:
In this talk Dr. Ahalt will describe a collection of three current projects, each funded by NIH. In these three projects groups from across the country are working together in order to assemble data in an organized framework that permits disparate biomedical, molecular, genomic, environmental, and societal data to be combined to discover new knowledge. The three projects are referred to as Data Translator, Data Commons and Data Reasoner. All of these projects are being developed using tools that were previously funded by NSF. Dr. Ahalt will describe each of the projects, their scientific objectives, and their current state. He will also discuss some of the interesting Team Science outcomes.
Bio:
Stan Ahalt is director of the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He leads a team of research scientists, software and network engineers, data science specialists and visualization experts who work closely with faculty research teams at UNC, Duke, NC State and with partners across the country. RENCI’s role is to provide enabling cyberinfrastructure to these research collaborations, which often means working on the challenges of data management, sharing, integration and security.
Dr. Ahalt is also a professor in the UNC Computer Science Department and is associate director at the Biomedical Informatics Service of the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute (NC TraCS), UNC’s CTSA award. In this role, he leverages the expertise and resources of RENCI to foster clinical and translational research across the UNC campus.
Dr. Ahalt’s primary foci in the recent years have been on two major data science initiatives: The National Consortium for Data Science (NCDS) and the iRODS Consortium. The NCDS is a private-public partnership of leaders in academia, industry and government formed to address the data challenges of the 21st century and advance data science. The iRODS Consortium, which includes the Max Planck Society as a key founding member, is an effort to establish a community to sustain the popular integrated Rule-Oriented Data System, developed at UNC and UC San Diego. RENCI leads the effort to deploy iRODS as an enterprise-quality solution, complete with rigorous testing and a robust, feature-rich code base. Recently, Dr. Ahalt became co-PI in the South Big Data Hub, an NSF project created to foster innovation through collaboration, diversity, education, and workforce development. UNC leads the South BD Hub in collaboration with Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Ahalt also leads team efforts as a part of two large NIH initiatives: Data Translator (NCATS) and Data Commons (NIH Common Fund & NHLBI).
To arrange for a meeting with Dr. Ahalt during his visit: please email Vandana Janeja (CISE, OAD) vjaneja@nsf.gov
To attend the webinar, please register at: http://www.tvworldwide.com/events/nsf/180206/
