Cancer Informatics

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Since its inception, the Cancer Informatics Shared Resource (CISR) has promoted high quality, innovative cancer research by providing members of the UWCCC with an informatics intellectual resource, including advancements in Bioinformatics, Clinical Informatics, Image Analysis and Computational Biology. Recent developments include progress toward new computational facilities and new CISR faculty from the Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics. These faculty bring expertise in genetics/genomics, bioinformatics, imaging and visualization techniques. We have also made significant progress in clinical informatics. The CISR continues to advance in its essential role to contribute to all UWCCC programs by providing technical and intellectual resources that address the specific needs of UWCCC researchers in a cost-effective manner. The CISR accomplishes this in two ways. (1) It promotes multidisciplinary collaboration by providing access to a range of skills and expertise in computational science, informatics, clinical informatics. (2) CISR faculty and professional staff fulfill an important leadership role by tracking and anticipating the needs of the UWCCC research community and then developing specialized informatics facilities to meet those needs. Those collaborations include both clinical and laboratory investigations. The CISR faculty and staff are members of the Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics and are part of the Department's training and research missions. CISR faculty participate in a training grant in bioinformatics funded by the National Library of Medicine. Pre- and postdoctoral students contributed the cancer research activities as part of their training by developing new methods and refining existing methods, at no cost to the CISR. In addition, faculty have their own research grants which also develop new methods, often stimulated by their collaborations with UWCCC investigators. This synergy between methodology research and collaboration has been a hallmark of this shared resource. In addition, bioinformatics faculty have adjunct appointments in the Department of Computer Sciences which also provides access to additional expertise. Finally, since the CISR faculty and staff are part of the Department of Biostatistics and Medical Informatics, they can also interact with leading biostatisticians. While the CISR has grown substantially over the past five years to nine faculty, two additional new positions already have been allocated for recruitment, and further growth beyond that is expected over the next five years.