Wednesday, April 26, 2006

1:15 pm - 2:15 pm

Level: Advanced

The National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG) is a program designed to support the creation and use of a syntactically and semantically interoperable data and analytical service Grid characterized by federated development. caBIG developers will leverage the NCICB caCORE infrastructure, comprised of open source tools and business processes, to achieve interoperability through the use of semantically equivalent data elements describing object-oriented data systems. These data elements and the object models are supported by controlled terminology and are programmatically accessible from an ISO 11179 compliant metadata registry. Recognizing that compatibility requires both technology and process, caBIG established a Vocabularies and Common Data Elements (VCDE) workspace staffed by volunteers and funded participants responsible for the review and coordination of information models, vocabulary and data element usage, and data standards. The VCDE workspace is key to the ongoing metadata management and harmonization process within the NCI and caBIG.

George Komatsoulis is Associate Director, Biomedical Informatics in the Core Infrastructure Group at the NCI Center for Bioinformatics (NCICB). He has responsibility for metadata content and harmonization at the NCICB and leads the Vocabularies and Common Data Elements (VCDE) workspace in the cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG). He has a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from the California Institute of Technology and did post-doctoral work in the Biochemistry Department at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Mathematics Department at the University of Southern California. Prior to joining the NCI, Dr. Komatsoulis was a Senior Bioinformatics Scientist at Human Genome Sciences, Inc. in Rockville, MD.