SDIWG:Meeting Minutes 20051021

SDI Telcon Minutes 21 Oct 2005 Note taker: Michael Sherman Attendees: Ivo Dinov (Toga Center), Peter Lyster, Don Jenkins (NLM), Jennifer Couch, Karen Skinner (NIDA), Art Castle (NIDDK), Brian Athey & David States (U Mich Center), German Cavelier (NIMH), Tina Kapur, John Haller (LSO, Toga), Suzanna Lewis (Musen Center), Shawn Murphy

For new attendees, Peter gave a guided tour of the SDIWG section of the NAMIC Wiki and the goals of SDIWG. Peter also said he would create a section for upcoming meetings & working groups of interest.

Karen reminded us that this is a public Wiki and announcing meetings could make it too big, but Tina said this hasn’t been a problem in reality. They say in the posting whether they are issuing an open invitation, and if not people are respectful of that.

Brian Athey suggested that the growth to 7 centers might mean we should establish working subgroups.

Peter went through the SDIWG “Ongoing Discussion” document and agenda & minutes from July 8 meeting, the “Zehouni-gram”. (Funny that the Z-gram says ontologies, etc. are “low risk” – just started a whole NCBC for this topic.)

Brian Athey suggested it might be time to update the Z-gram to reflect current reality. In 2003 “The Grid” was new infrastructure, national middleware, Globus, etc. Grids are not turning out to be so pervasive in academia, we need more specialized middleware. Grids were more technically driven than user driven; that box in the Z-gram needs to be rethought. Peter’s rule of thumb: Every five years we’re starting from scratch.

Peter: SDIWG belongs to the centers; it is whatever we want to make of it.

David States asked for elaboration on shared postdocs.

Peter requested that new participants read the notes of earlier SDIWG meetings, esp. the July 8 meeting in Bethesda. (Susanna) said there is a lot of reading between the lines required.

Peter discussed the “NIH Forge” idea.

Susanna asked if any “yellow pages” has been put together yet. Peter discussed his recent proposal to get some funding (which failed due to lack of time).

Peter invited the new people to speak. Susanna said we should just start building a yellow pages. Would like to see if other centers are interested in each other’s software. Brian Athey liked that idea. David suggested an ontology(!). David & Susanna expressed interest in an “all hands” meeting where the centers can present to one another. Musen center wants to put on a tutorial, working group meeting in the Spring to introduce ontologies to others.

Much ontology discussion ensued, but I didn’t understand that well enough to summarize it.

Peter mentioned his early idea of “just collecting links” and how it led to a more complicated plan to set up some requirements. Suzanna said we should just go ahead. Tina: how to use ontologies in Kikinis center; invited new people to attend their Thursday meetings and suggested that they might want to sit in on other centers’ meetings as well.

I said a bottom-up list is probably not a good way for centers to understand one another and that presentations by PIs would provide context. Suzanna said she wants a “skeleton”. Ivo said there are hundreds of items and mentioned the CCB links.

I slipped Suzanna an action item to show us what she means (and she graciously accepted) – thanks, Suzanna.

Peter: who should attend SDIWG meetings? What are metrics for SDIWG? Suzanna suggested a mailing list with agenda. Peter will send 2 emails a month: agenda & minutes. David said we may be mixing different levels in the TCONs and should focus, perhaps using working groups: SW Engr, data interchange & sharing, collaborative opportunities & challenges, infrastructure.

Suzanna & Brian requested a formal mailing list. Tina volunteered to set up something with Kitware.

Focused work areas within the SDIWG (Brian Athey and David States):

- Software engineeering

    * Imaging
    * Bioinformatics and computational biology modular tools
    * Ontologies

- Data integration and sharing

    * Genomic, proteomic, molecular interaction, pathways
    * Multiscale image data
    * Model interoperability and parameter repositories
    * Clinical data associated with DBPs
    * Privacy and security considerations

- Colloboration opportunities and challenges

    * Working groups on ontologies
    * Workflow managers

- Infrastructure

    * Biocyberinfrastructure
    * High end computing resources
    * Persistent data space

Goal is to maximize synergy and cohesion of the NCBC centers and facilitate NCBC productivity.