www.incf.org
1st INCF Workshop
on
Global Portal Services
for Neuroscience
September 3-4, 2007 - Stockholm, Sweden
Nature Precedings : doi:10.1038/npre.2008.1779.1 : Posted 8 Apr 2008
[ ]
1st INCF Workshop on Global Portal Services for Neuroscience
September 3-4, 2007
International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility Secretariat
Stockholm, Sweden
Authors
Jaap van Pelt and Gordon Shepherd
Scientific Organizer
Gordon Shepherd, Yale University, New Haven, USA
Workshop Participants
Jan G. Bjaalie, INCF Secretariat, Stockholm, Sweden
Chinh Dang, Allen Institute for Brain Research, Seattle, USA
Mark H Ellisman, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, USA
Daniel Gardner, Weill Medical College of Cornell University, New York, USA
Michael F Huerta, National Institute of Mental Health, NIH, Bethesda, USA
Colin D Ingram, University of Newcastle, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK
Kathie L Olsen, National Science Foundation, Arlington, USA
Raphael Ritz, INCF Secretariat, Stockholm, Sweden
Andrea Schenone, University of Genova, Genova, Italy
Gordon Shepherd, Yale University, New Haven, USA
Arthur W Toga, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, USA
Shiro Usui, RIKEN BSI, Wako, Japan
David C Van Essen, Washington University, St. Louis, USA
Jaap van Pelt, VU University, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (Rapporteur)
Robert W. Williams, University of Tennessee, Memphis, USA
Workshop observers
Jim Austin, UK
Esther P Gardner, USA
Andreas Herz , Germany
Luciano Milanesi, Italy
Elli Chatzopoulou, INCF Secretariat
Pontus Holm, INCF Secretariat
Ylva Lillberg, INCF Secretariat
Supported by the EU Special Support Action INCF, the INCF Central Fund and the Swedish
Foundation for Strategic Research
Nature Precedings : doi:10.1038/npre.2008.1779.1 : Posted 8 Apr 2008
[ ]
Contents
1
Executive Summary
4
2
Introduction
5
3
Workshop Discussions
5
3.1 Role of INCF in global portal services for neuroscience
5
3.2
Defining a portal
5
3.3
Developing a portal
6
3.4
INCF role in coordination & support
7
3.5
Opportunities
8
4
Recommendations
8
4.1
Recommendations for a General Coordination Model and Roles
8
4.2
Specific recommendations to the INCF
9
Appendix A: Summary of portals discussed during the workshop
10
Appendix B: Workshop Program
11
Nature Precedings : doi:10.1038/npre.2008.1779.1 : Posted 8 Apr 2008
[ ]
1. Executive Summary
Coordinating Development of Portals/
Databases
INCF was established by definition to coordinate activities in
neuroinformatics, i.e., coordination and promotion of databas-
ing/sharing, analytical tools and computational models. Portals
were considered to be basic tools not only in neuroinformatics
activities in the field but also for the INCF mission itself. As
the amount of neuroscience data explodes, so do the numbers
of databases and associated portals, and the relations, often
overlapping, between them. It is urgent that these activities be
coordinated to make them accessible and useful to the neuro-
science community. The committee determined that it is essen-
tial that the INCF take a lead role in this coordination.
1. INCF should be proactive in establishing a list of
maintained and developing neuroscience portals/data-
bases. This list should include links to development sites
and descriptions of the objectives of the project. The lev-
el of disclosure of any new development project should
be regulated by the developer.
2. INCF should: i) act as a broker to bring together indi-
viduals with expertise in particular areas of development,
ii) provide guidance on the availability of development re-
sources, and iii) advise on current "best practice", includ-
ing infrastructure recommendations, design processes,
and scalable source control. This "best practice" should
be conducted to enable interoperability via improved and
pervasive ontology, have accessible API/scriptable inter-
face, and have exposed database schemas.
3. INCF should generate a policy statement on open
source and accessibility of projects in development.
4. INCF could provide a repository or library for the
code base, data, etc., of projects no longer in develop-
ment which might be reused in developing new resourc-
es.
5. INCF representatives should be observers at NSF,
NIH, DOD, Creative Commons, UK e-Science All
Hands, and other meetings on core technologies related
to cyberinfrastructure, and pass appropriate information
on to developers.
6. INCF should play a role in identifying and facilitating
the development of unique value-added projects, such as
an international database of neuronal connectivity.
7. INCF should identify and coordinate requirements
(standards) that assist in the acquisition of data, meta-
data, and development of databases.
In addition, there needs to be a standard practice/policy on the
release of statements and information. Methods and routes for
dissemination vary between internal documents within nodes
and those for external consumption. How do you measure/
evaluate success and how are people to be held accountable?
Success measures must be considered in the context of on-go-
ing funding/support from the National Nodes. Annual reports
can fulfill some of these requirements both in the preparation
and its dissemination. This could include summaries of node
activity, which will help with good practice.
Last but not least, opportunities for running undergraduate
courses in neuroinformatics should be considered as well as
including neuroinformatics in medical training. Educational
material could also be made available via the portal.
Nature Precedings : doi:10.1038/npre.2008.1779.1 : Posted 8 Apr 2008
[ ]
2. Introduction
The goal of the workshop was phrased as to map out exist-
ing portal services for neuroscience, identify their features and
future plans, and outline opportunities for synergistic develop-
ments. The workshop aimed to discuss alternative formats of
future global and integrated portal services.
The workshop covered two full days and followed a program
of talks and discussions. The first day included brief presenta-
tions by each of the participants, identification of several key
areas for discussion and development, and an initial meeting
of workgroups in these areas. Individual presentations fo-
cused on topics of direct or indirect relevance for the over-
all workshop goal and included areas such as: perspectives
on how to organize neuroscience data on a global scale, ex-
amples of large scale portals existing and under develop-
ment, examples of large, individual databases, examples of
networks of databases, and institutional and funding perspec-
tives. The program on the second day included a continua-
tion of discussions within the workgroups and preparations
of conclusions and presentations, followed by plenary reports
of the workgroups, a general discussion, and working on a fi-
nal draft for the recommendations to INCF on coordinating
neuroscience portals and databases for further dissemination.
The workshop was considered to be timely in orienting
the effort toward a new era of global organization of por-
tals and databases for accessing neuroscience information.
An overview of portal facilities presented at the workshop is
given in Appendix A1. The discussions focused mainly on the
role of INCF in global portal services. The outcomes of these
discussions are summarized in the next section.
3. Workshop Discussions
3.1 Role of INCF in global portal services
for neuroscience
Discussions led to the idea of a `portal of portals' as an instru-
ment for INCF to overview available portal services, to make
bridges between them, and to promote and advise in the de-
velopment of new portal services. INCF could thus provide
a portal of portals, with emphasis on coordination (such as
mirroring of sites in the case of heavy traffic, or providing a
unified look and feel of computational environments). In pro-
viding directories of portals and databases, INCF should not
just duplicate what exists but give added value, for instance,
by adding short descriptions and characterizations of databases
that will be helpful to the users.
Discussions resulted also in the view that INCF should adopt
both a supportive role when different initiatives are taken in the
field, and a proactive role in identifying issues and facilitating
new directions.
The committee discussed a wide range of issues that relate to
the role of INCF in coordination and support of global portal
services. A general model for this coordination is summarized
in the next section.
3.2 Defining a portal
Role/Content of portals
The question "What is a portal?" was raised. Is it just a website
with links, or a system that integratively connects databases?
Portals can function (i) as a resource registry/repository (GEO,
boring but necessary), (ii) as a sophisticated search engine
(Google, NCBI, UCSC, NDG, NIF), (iii) as a knowledge gen-
erator/integrator (BIRN, ABA, GeneNetwork), (iv) as a play-
ground and resource bazaar for experts only (Bioconductor for
array data code), (v) as a dynamic encyclopedia (Wikipedia),
(vi) as a local community resource tool (example of ALZfo-
rum, CTC society site). Expectations of a portal were phrased
as getting good answers to standard questions and getting good
answers to questions we didn't even know we could ask. Por-
tals may also function as grid-based e-science environments
with Biolab and CARMEN as typical examples. Participants
agreed that an INCF portal of portals should be in the service
of the Neuroscience Community in the broadest sense, both in
research and in education. As different user communities are
generally not mutually exclusive, neither are portals servicing
these communities. Thus, while showing much complementa-
rity, portals may also have overlapping functionality. It was
noted that a vacuum exists in using databases and models to
generate testable hypotheses.
Nature Precedings : doi:10.1038/npre.2008.1779.1 : Posted 8 Apr 2008
[ ]
Lessons learned
A significant contribution came from Arthur Toga, who sum-
marized his experiences with a variety of portal projects for
large, multisite imaging consortia (such as The International
Consortium for Brain Mapping (ICBM), The Alzheimer's
Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI), The Biomedical In-
formatics Research Network (BIRN-Mouse, Morph, F), The
Huntington's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (HDNI), The
fMRI Data Center (fMRIDC), The NIH MRI Study of Normal
Brain Development (NIHPD), ACE).
Mission The mission of the project should be clearly defined.
An important issue is whether the project's aims are creating
databases or doing science.
Data There is a general consensus about the data to be made
available through the portal.
Composition of the consortium It is important to know the
people participating in the project, and to allow them to decide
their own participation on the basis of expectations, skills, and
complementarity. The required expertise within the consortium
should be present and proven.
Design The portal needs to be designed for longitudinal use.
Technology/tools The technology for data sharing must be in
place and available for the implementation of the portal func-
tions. An upgrade policy is needed in view of future techno-
logical developments in order to guarantee stability in portal
operations. Otherwise, the project follows a moving target,
controlled by technological developments.
Scientific focus The scientific focus of the project needs to
be well defined (which does not always happen to be the case).
Most projects are too broad, with the risk of reducing the im-
pact of the project. However, there are also examples of good
projects with less focus.
Size of the consortium Different rules appear to be needed
to maintain coherence within large or small consortia. Large
consortia appear to raise many issues of competence.
Duration of the project Long-lasting projects will inevita-
bly face many changes in their context and be confronted with
continuous requests for additions, with the risk that the project
loses focus.
License issues License issues need to be defined at the begin-
ning of the project. One has to be aware that `open source' has
many meanings.
Leadership It must be known who is running the show. A
committee may have diverging views.
Funding Funding is essential for continuity of the portal, oth-
erwise the game is over. This issue inevitably becomes perti-
nent at the end of a project and raises many problems.
Sharing It is important to agree on further differentiation of
data and tool sharing with respect to who (the people to share
with), how (the mechanism of sharing), when (the conditions
for sharing), what (the content to be shared), etc. For instance,
the people to share with can be differentiated according to their
function (such as home, guest, member, leader, manager) and
the mechanisms of sharing can also be differentiated (such as
Browse, Download, Upload, Access content, Project info). The
Table below gives an example of sharing differentiation.
3.3 Developing a portal
Global collaboration
An important goal, outlined by Kathie Olsen of NSF, is ex-
panding support of collaboration on a global scale with in-
ternational partners. For instance, INCF may assist groups of
database developers in Japan in finding partners, and give sup-
port for the international embedding of Japanese resources.
Enabling technologies
Portal services are strongly driven by enabling technologies
such as high-performance computing, GRID infrastructures
and visualization tools. Examples of such portals are BIRN,
CARMEN and Biolab. It is strongly recommended that INCF
builds on the opportunities arising from these technological
developments.
Home Guest
Member
Leader
Manager
Browse
*
*
*
*
*
Download
*
*
*
*
Upload
*
*
*
Access content
*
*
Project info
*
Table 1: Example of sharing differentiation
Nature Precedings : doi:10.1038/npre.2008.1779.1 : Posted 8 Apr 2008
[ ]
Sustainability
Questions were raised concerning the lifetime of data, archiving
the data, and how to maintain and support database facilities
over the long term, requiring high investments in data centers.
These questions essentially concern sustainability issues. The
importance of sustainability was recognized by INCF, which
is organizing a dedicated INCF Workshop on Sustainability of
Neuroscience Databases, December 13-14, 2007, at the INCF
Secretariat in Stockholm, Sweden.
Interoperability
INCF has a primary role in promoting interoperability. Adher-
ence to interoperability requirements may lead to convergence
on common architectures. INCF will build on "best practic-
es" from other experienced web communities such as ATOM
(
http://www.atomenabled.org/
), OAI-PMH (
http://www.
openarchives.org
), RDF (
http://www.w3.org/RDF
), OWL
(
http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-ref
), and OpenID (
http://openid.
net
). Interoperability makes it possible to put findings of dif-
ferent projects together, which may reveal surprising new cor-
relations (an example mentioned by Arthur Toga is that studies
of cortical maturation show that it begins in childhood at the
central sulcus, while independent studies of ageing show that
degeneration occurs in reverse order; database interoperability
brings these two complementary findings together).
Evaluation
The question concerning the organization around portals was
discussed. Japan has adopted a scheme of annual evaluations
of platforms and databases, and this was determined to be a
good model for INCF. Criteria must be formulated for these
evaluations.
Steering committee for portal services
It was agreed that a steering committee is needed for support-
ing this INCF coordination role. The present workgroup on
Portal Services could become such an INCF steering commit-
tee on portal services, acting in the first instance through the
organization of annual workshops.
3.4 INCF role in coordination & support
Many issues of INCF coordination concern data-related con-
cepts, such as data models, data formats, definitions of terms,
ontologies, etc., which are the formalisms that allow compu-
tation upon, and organization and querying of, the data. By
coordinating data-related concepts, informatics tools and in-
formatics resources will become increasingly accessible and
interoperable. It must be recognized that such coordination
will be an ongoing and dynamic process.
When to coordinate?
INCF should carefully select the areas for further stimulation.
The community to address needs to be selected as being best
poised, and be willing to be coordinated and to provide the
required input of data and information. The community needs
to be identified (for instance, by the type of data being used
or the domain of research or the existence of digitized data
or the use of neuroinformatics tools). An educated estimation
of the extent of the task is needed (i.e., how big is the bite?).
It is recommended that INCF formulates a list of criteria that
helps selecting areas for coordination. Also the existence of ad-
jacent communities, where neuroinformatics tools are already
routinely used, is important. It was deemed crucial for INCF
to find and coordinate selected areas for pilot projects, which
make something happen and stimulate new developments.
Initiation of new projects/developments
INCF implements its coordination role by organizing work-
shops, providing portal services, stimulating ontology develop-
ment, and supporting topical program areas such as large-scale
modeling and digital atlasing. The workshops are the instru-
ments to recommend projects and themes for further devel-
opment. Recommendations may also concern new services to
be supported by a portal, or even setting up new portals. Rec-
ommendations for new initiatives, such as building databases,
should be based on actual overviews of current developments
in the areas concerned, such as databases in development.
INCF has a primary role in producing these overviews. INCF
may initiate unique value-added projects, such as facilitating
data mirroring through collaborations. A concrete example is
the collaboration with the Allen Brain Institute to set up a mir-
ror site for the Allen Brain Atlas.
Nature Precedings : doi:10.1038/npre.2008.1779.1 : Posted 8 Apr 2008
[ ]
Assistance
INCF can provide assistance in the development and matu-
ration of portals and databases, in the formulation of open-
source datasharing/databasing policies, and in the formulation
of criteria for acceptance. Such assistance can be targeted to
developers, to funding agencies and journals, and to industry,
etc. INCF can play a role in periodic evaluations of databases
and providing constructive feedback. INCF can function as an
honest broker to help individual investigators in searching for
the availability of existing databases and databases in develop-
ment for sharing, or in finding alternative data sources. INCF
can provide logistical support. There are potentials for INCF
toward atlas consensus, spatial reconciliation, and directions
for finding data to test datasets for segmentation.
User communities
User communities are the raison d'être of portals and databases.
They define the spectrum of integrated services to be provided
by the portal, such as information about PhD programs, con-
ferences, meetings, etc, and with links to databases and other
portals, to tools and technical developments. For INCF to play
a meaningful role it is crucial to have information about the
communities serviced by the portals, i.e. who are the people or
committees involved in the portals. Services supporting social
interactions are also important, as was demonstrated by Shiro
Usui for Japan, where a variety of tools is already available via
the internet for organizing feedback and user interaction, such
as blogging, tagging, planets, clouds --examples from indus-
try, such as Amazon, can also be cited.
National Nodes
It was discussed whether each National Node should develop
its own portal, and what role INCF should play in their coor-
dination. Because National Nodes have a coordinating role at
the local level, they may wish to develop their own portals to
accommodate services for their "local" communities. INCF
could/should watch over their global embedding.
Technical development of portals
INCF can provide advice and resources in the technical de-
velopment of databases. Assistance can be given to implement
interoperability requirements as well as standards on data and
metadata, ontology "standards" and the use of markup lan-
guages (such as NeuroCommons Mashup Browser in ABA,
for example), the integration in semantic webs, open-source
policies, etc. INCF can also advise on infrastructure, e.g., with
reference to the NSF cyberinfrastructure, and possibly with
support from NSF observers. It was noted that many policies
and standards are currently in various phases of development
themselves, yet that is no reason to wait until their stabiliza-
tion. The graphical toolbox of Shiro Usui could be helpful in
visualizing the relations and homologies in different ontology
and nomenclature schemes. These tools may also help visual-
ize relationships between portals.
3.5 Opportunities
Industry
INCF may coordinate processes toward new standards in in-
strumentation as a service to communities and industry.
Education and training
Portals may additionally be instrumental in the coordinating
role of INCF with respect to education and training in neuro-
informatics. INCF may promote the development of targeted
E-science programs and virtual lab facilities, for instance via
EU funded Initial Training Networks.
Link portals with journals
Transformations in the scientific publication process may dra-
matically impact how neuroscientists share and mine experi-
mental data. A recent PubMed Plus conference in St. Louis,
MO, USA, June 2007, on "New Directions in Publishing and
Data Mining" discussed the formation of a new Neuroscience
Peer Review Consortium for sharing reviews between neuro-
science journals. This Consortium has been operational since
January 1, 2008. INCF could also advise journals by notifying
them when data is suitable for database storage, and which da-
tabases are available for different kinds of data.
4. Recommendations
4.1 Recommendations for a General
Coordination Model and Roles
As the amount of neuroscience data explodes, so do the num-
bers of databases and associated portals. It is urgent that these
activities be coordinated to make them accessible and useful to
the neuroscience community. It is essential that INCF takes a
leading role in this coordination.
What is being coordinated by INCF? Fundamentally, it is data-
related concepts such as data models, data formats, definitions
of terms, ontologies, etc., which are the formalisms that allow
computation upon, and organization and querying of, the data.
By coordinating data-related concepts, informatics tools and
informatics resources will become coordinated and increas-
ingly interoperable. It is recommended that a general model
for this coordination would include the following elements:
Nature Precedings : doi:10.1038/npre.2008.1779.1 : Posted 8 Apr 2008
[ ]
· Recognition that coordination will be an ongoing and dy-
namic process
· Roles in coordination
- INCF provides organizational and logistical support
- Leadership and implementation comes from the re-
search community
o Thought leaders
o Community-at-large
- Iterative process between products by thought leaders
and modification based on input from community-at-
large
- Implementation by those developing informatics tools
and resources (e.g., databases)
· Parsing neuroscience into subcommunities
- Based on data types (e.g., genetic, circuits, neuroimag-
ing, etc.)
- Identify opportunities to integrate across these (see bul-
let below)
· Keeping in mind potential hooks to informationally-ad-
jacent subcommunities (e.g., genetic data-defined com-
munity and protein structure data-defined community) as
coordination within a subcommunity develops, so con-
ventions and standards that emerge in one community
can be leveraged by, and serve as a potential venue of
integration with, another community
· Identification of which subcommunities are well poised
or ill poised for such coordination--work first with
subcommunity(s) that are best poised
- Develop criteria to identify which is well or not well
poised. Potential criteria might include:
o Are data widely gathered in digital form?
o Do members use informatics and other computational
tools?
o Is there evidence of the need for coordination of infor-
matics efforts (e.g., via editorials, recommendations
from meetings, etc.)
· INCF coordination might be at the level of disseminat-
ing or otherwise facilitating the use of particular, already
generally accepted (if only by major players) data-related
concepts (e.g., data models, data formats, vocabularies,
ontologies) OR at the level of sharing information about
developing and emerging data-related concepts.
4.2 Specific recommendations to the INCF
· INCF should identify relevant portals worldwide and
evaluate their complementarity or overlap. National
Nodes should be encouraged to participate in this analy-
sis. There is an urgent need to coordinate this vast array
of portals and data.
· INCF could serve as an honest broker across neuroin-
formatics efforts. INCF could not only point to ongoing
neuroinformatics tools and resources, but also character-
ize these, using objective criteria, providing this infor-
mation to potential users. Such criteria could relate to
specific aspects (such as ease of data entry and suitability
of particular databases for sharing data in particular com-
munities, etc.).
· The criteria developed to characterize neuroinformat-
ics tools and resources could be posted and the research
community could be encouraged to indicate how well a
particular tool or resource satisfies each criterion.
· INCF could educate investigators about the availability
and utility of neuroinformatics tools and resources use-
ful for their research. INCF might also mediate between
investigators and database managers.
· INCF should develop and sustain expertise about data-
bases suitable to allow data sharing connected to journal
publications.
· INCF could work with journals to facilitate data shar-
ing by increasing awareness of databases appropriate to
their respective journals. Reviewers and editors could
encourage authors to submit their data to relevant data-
bases when appropriate.
· INCF should help investigators to deposit their data into
appropriate databases.
· INCF could serve as a coordinator of policies related to
the sharing of neuroscience data, and neuroinformatics
tools and resources across different funding agencies
(public and private) across different countries--perhaps
by stating best practices and promulgating those across
these agencies and countries. A useful starting point
would be for INCF to ask each node to provide informa-
tion about such policies of major neuroscience and neu-
roinformatics-funding organizations in their country.
· INCF should facilitate training opportunities across in-
formation science and neuroscience at undergraduate
student, graduate student, and postdoctoral levels.
· INCF should establish a steering committee to provide
advice on the implementation of these recommendations.
It is critical to have follow-up that would include physi-
cal meetings of this committee at appropriate venues.
Nature Precedings : doi:10.1038/npre.2008.1779.1 : Posted 8 Apr 2008
[ 10 ]
Appendix A: Summary of portals discussed during the workshop
URL addresses
Remarks
Japan node and platforms
http://www.neuroinf.jp
http://nijc.brain.riken.jp
Organization and quality - Steering committee,
Platform coordinating committee, annual evaluation,
each platform services own community
NIF
Neuroscience Information
Framework
http://neurogateway.org/
NIH - catalog of electronic and non-electronic
neuroscience research resources,
SumsDB
Surface Management
System Database
http://sumsdb.wustl.edu/sums/
index.jsp
Repository of brain-mapping data
NDG
Neuroscience Database
Gateway
http://ndg.sfn.org/
Selection criteria for inclusion (level of maturation,
functionality, how rapid is information obtained)
SenseLab
http://senselab.med.yale.edu/
Models of neurons and neural systems
Neurondb
The neurophysiology
database
http://neurodb.dertech.com/
Database for neurophysiological data storage,
retrieval, and analysis
BrainPharm
http://senselab.med.yale.edu/
BrainPharm/
Database to support research on drugs for the
treatment of different neurological disorders.
Bio-Lab
Laboratory for bioimages
& bioengineering
http://www.bio.dist.unige.it/
DIST Genova portal function, grid approach,
clinical applications. Integration of data and services,
complexity hidden for users
Neurodatabase.org
http://neurodatabase.org
Neurophysiology database + tools anatomical
visualization
NeuroMorpho.Org
http://neuromorpho.org/
Inventory of digitally reconstructed neurons
ABA
Allen Brain Atlas
http://www.brain-map.org
Image database of gene expression in the mouse
brain.
CARMEN
Code Analysis, Repository
and Modelling for e-
Neuroscience
http://www.carmen.org.uk
EPSRC e-science Pilot Project
Including database for electrophysiology, virtual
laboratory, grid enabled, repositories, toolkit,
integration of electrophysiological and morphological
data
BIRN
Biomedical Informatics
Research Network
http://www.nbirn.net/
A National Information Infrastructure to Enable and
Advance Biomedical Research
CCDB
Cell Centered Database
http://ccdb.ucsd.edu/
High resolution 2D, 3D and 4D data from light and
electron microscopy,
The GeneNetwork
http://www.genenetwork.org
Resources for systems genetics.
NITRC
The Neuroimaging
Informatics Tools and
Resources Clearinghouse
http://www.nitrc.org/
NIH - neuroimaging resources for fMRI and related
structural analyses
Nature Precedings : doi:10.1038/npre.2008.1779.1 : Posted 8 Apr 2008
[ 11 ]
Appendix 2: Workshop Program
September 3, 2007
08.30 09.00
Introductions (Bjaalie and Shepherd)
09.00 18.00
Scientific presentations and discussions
Gordon Shepherd
Introduction and orientation
David C. van Essen
Opportunities and challenges in navigating
Shiro Usui
Japan-node portal and the platforms
Andrea Schenone
Some experiences in sharing data and services through e-science portals
Gordon Shepherd
Experiences building the Neuroscience Database Gateway
Daniel Gardner
The Neuroscience Information Network: An open source solution and template for web
neuroscience
Chinh Dang
Creating a community-driven neuroscience webware
Jaap van Pelt
Database opportunities for the Netherlands
Colin D. Ingram
CARMEN: Developing an e-science portal to support collaborative research in time-se-
ries neuroscience data
Mark H. Ellisman
The Biomedical Informatics research Network (BIRN) and the Cell Centered Database
(CCDB) Building collaborative environments for integrating and sharing neuroscience
knowledge
Arthur W. Toga
Multi-site imaging consortia: Lessons learned
Robert W. Williams
Interoperability among mouse genomic, neurogenetic, and neuroimaging web resources
Raphael Ritz
The INCF Neuroinformation Community Portal
Michael F Huerta
Neuroscience and informatics: Intersecting priorities at NIH
Kathie Olsen
NSF: Perspectives on cyberinfrastructure and neuroscience
20.00
Dinner
September 4, 2007
08.30 12.00
Discussion
12.00 13.30
Lunch
13.30 18.00
Discussion
Each presentation was approximately 20 minutes, including questions.
Nature Precedings : doi:10.1038/npre.2008.1779.1 : Posted 8 Apr 2008
www
.incf.or
g
INCF Secretariat
Karolinska Institutet
Nobels väg 15 A
SE-171 77 Stockholm
Sweden
Tel: +46 8 524 87 093
Fax: +46 8 524 87 150
E-mail: info@incf.org
design | easy
.no
Nature Precedings : doi:10.1038/npre.2008.1779.1 : Posted 8 Apr 2008