Symposium on Open Data, Prize

The NIH Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) Initiative and the Office of the Associate Director for Data Science will hold an Open Data Science Symposium on Dec. 1. Big data is an underutilized resource for innovation and discovery in biomedical research and NIH is committed to unleashing its full potential by making it an open and easily accessible resource. The Open Data Science Symposium will feature discussions with the leaders in big data, open science and biomedical research while also showcasing the finalists of the Open Science Prize, a worldwide competition to harness the innovative power of open data.

Speakers include: NIH director Dr. Francis Collins; former NIH and NCI director Dr. Harold Varmus; John Wilbanks, Sage Bionetworks chief commons officer; Peter Goodhand, Global Alliance for Genomics and Health executive director; Niklas Blomberg, founding director of Elixir; and Robert Kiley, head of digital services at the Wellcome Library.

The six Open Science Prize finalists will demonstrate prototypes of big data tools currently under development that utilize publicly available datasets in environmental, epidemiological and health sciences to improve the health of individuals worldwide.  

The event will be held from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Bethesda North Marriott Conference Center, 5701 Marinelli Rd., North Bethesda. For registration and agenda, visit http://event.capconcorp.com/wp/bd2k-odss/.