CI4CC Spring 2016 Workshop

The Role of Academic Technology Development in Cancer Research

Academic development of the informatics technology is not without controversies…

There are always those questions that academic investigator might be pondering about:

  • What should I share and when?
  • How to support engineering when innovation is the main perceived measure of success?
  • How to find resources to support user community if I don’t have enough time to write papers?
  • Why would anyone ever consider open sourcing academic software tools?

There are considerations by the funders of the research aimed to encourage collaborations and sharing, and ensure sustainability of the technology resource.

There are concerns by the end-users of the technology about its translation into the clinic, or into a commercial product.

In an attempt to create a forum to discuss those and other related questions, NCI Informatics Technology for Cancer Research (ITCR) and Cancer Informatics for Cancer Research (CI4CC) communities are organizing a workshop tentatively titled The Role of Academic Technology Development in Cancer Research.

The workshop will be held on March 13, 2016, the opening day of the CI4CC Spring 2016 Symposium, in Napa, California. Mary Goldman from UCSC Genomics Institute and I are co-chairing this event. Regretfully, I will not be able to attend the workshop in person, due to a conflict with another meeting on March 14 in Washington DC, but Ron Kikinis will speak and will represent QIICR.

While the final agenda of the workshop is still being finalized, we have confirmed participation from the speakers representing versatile views and backgrounds, organized into three sessions:

  • In Session I, leaders of well-established academic tools will speak of their experience in initiating and sustaining academic technology development and building community around an academic project. The tools represented in this session include 3DSlicer, TIES and Apache cTAKES, Bioconductor, and MGH Tumor Imaging Metrics.
  • In Session II, we will discuss perspectives on academic technology development from the key stakeholders: translation of academic tools into commercial products, perspective of the NIH as a funder of the technology development, generating profit from licensing academic technology.
  • Session III will give the podium to the end-users of academic technology.

The plan is to allocate plenty of time for panels and discussions, and social interaction among the attendees.

If interested, see more details including the goal of the workshop and the list of the confirmed speakers in this document, and please consider joining!

Dialogue & Discussion