Contents
News from NCRR
Funding Opportunity for Data-Sharing Projects
NIH will be supporting new projects that encourage biomedical researchers to use the Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN) and the cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG), two major programs for data and tool sharing.
The Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN) infrastructure has been used extensively in neuroimaging. A new NIH funding opportunity would increase its use in new areas. Photo courtesy of University of California, San Diego, and Duke University.
BIRN, an NCRR-funded initiative, aims to foster large-scale collaborations that use high-speed networks, high-performance computing, and integrated software. First used in neuroimaging, BIRN has now matured and could serve a broad range of biomedical research groups. Similarly, caBIG, launched by the National Cancer Institute, offers infrastructure and tools applicable beyond the cancer community.
To increase these tools’ impact, NIH has announced a funding opportunity for projects that facilitate wider use. One of the key factors for allowing BIRN’s use by many researchers is the “federation” of data. A federated infrastructure removes some of the complexities of how the data were obtained or where they are located. The user simply asks and the data are made available. Similarly, federated software tools allow researchers to access bioinformatics and other tools from different sources.
This funding opportunity is affiliated with the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research, a collaborative effort to accelerate the pace of discovery and understanding in neuroscience research (for details visit http://neuroscienceblueprint.nih.gov). The opening date for applications is December 18, 2007.
