NCI Initiative

The UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center was recently selected as a member of the NCI's major program initiative in Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG). Dr. Seng-jaw Soong, director of the Medical Statistics Section, was invited to serve on the caBIG Strategic Planning Group to assist the caBIG oversight structure with strategic planning and vision activities. The Center was site-visited by the NCI team on August 23, 2003. Thirteen presentations were given by selected Cancer Center members and by several other computing and informatics-related faculty members on campus. The site visit members appreciated our presentations, the cooperative spirits of faculty, openness in discussion and our demonstrated willingness to work with NCI on the caBIG initiatives. They also liked our proposed pilot projects for the caBIG and thought that some of them were quite unique and innovative. Overall, the site visit was quite successful.

We plan to increase our interaction and collaboration with Dr. David Allison's group in statistical genetics in the School of Public Health and Dr. Bharat Soni's group in the UAB High Performance Computing Facility in the future.