NIH announces big data research and education grant recipients

Vannevar Bush and an artist's rendition of his hypothetical scientific
collaboration work station, dubbed the "memex" -- memory extender

In the 1940s, Vannevar Bush envisioned scientists collaborating using networked desktop machines he dubbed "memexes." That was science fiction, but 70 years later, the Internet has opened the possibility of medical researchers creating and sharing massive clinical and health science databases. (For an early example, check out the Personal Genome Project, which is compiling individual's genome data and detailed medical records for analysis).

The National Institutes of Health has established a program called Big Data to Knowledge with the goal of advancing health and discovery through big data, and they recently announced the recipients of the first round of their big data funding:

• Centers of Excellence for Big Data Computing
• LINCS-BD2K Perturbation Data Coordination and Integration Center
• Data Discovery Index Coordination Consortium
• Training and Career Development in Biomedical Big Data
• Development of Big Data Courses and Open Educational Resources

Government research -- agency funded, as in ARPA's funding of the ARPANet, or through presidential science initiatives -- is crucial to advances in science and technology.

Scientific collaboration -- the first application

During World War II, President Roosevelt's science adviser Vannevar Bush imagined ways a network could facilitate scientific communication and collaboration. His 1945 Atlantic Monthly article As We May Think inspired internetworking pioneers like Doug Engelbart and J. C. R. Licklider. (See our Internet history notes).

Today, when we think of Internet applications, goofy movies on Youtube or downloading music come to mind -- not scientific collaboration. But the Internet is shaping and facilitating science.

John Udell discussed the role of the Internet in science in an interview of Timo Hannay, Director of Web Publishing, Nature Publishing Group. Nature is a leading scientific journal, and Hannay is looking for ways the Internet can facilitate science. For instance, he is interested in publishing data sets as well as articles and producing videos showing how experiments have been done. (See The Journal of Visualized Experiments). Some current examples of Nature's services are:

• Connotea.org (bookmarks for scientists -- like del.icio.us)
• Nature Network (A social network for scientists -- like MySpace)
• Nature Precedings (Preliminary publication and discussion -- like blogs with comments and a rating system)

Hannay is interested in helping scientists communicate with lay people as well as each other, and they are using Podcasts to that end. Check this short excerpt from the interview for their discussion of the advantages of podcasts.