Overview

February 22, 2019
University of Maryland
Room 2460
A.V. Williams Building
8223 Paint Branch Drive
College Park, MD 20742

  

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the University of Maryland propose to foster collaborations between data science researchers at UMD and cancer researchers at the NCI.

This will be the second of a series of four workshops that will provide a meeting ground for informal exchange of knowledge, ideas and networking to facilitate such collaborations. The intent is that this will lead to several collaborative projects that will be carried out by UMD data science graduate and undergraduate students under the joint supervision of UMD and NCI researchers.

The first workshop was held on November 30, 2018 with 150 registrants and focused on presentations by UMD data scientists to provide an introduction of various data science and machine learning approaches and principles towards potential joint research opportunities. One of its goals was to stimulate NCI PIs to present possibly underexplored data they either have or can make available in a second workshop.

The second workshop was planned for Friday, February 1, 2019 at UMD, but was cut at 1pm; inclement weather forced closing of UMD at 1pm.  Workshop 2.2 will be Friday, February 22, 2019 at UMD and will include most of the other presentations.

The workshop will focus on presentations by interested NCI principal investigators (PIs) describing their research questions, data and challenges of interest. Significant time will be allotted to networking sessions to enable researchers from both NCI and UMD to interact with each other. Overall, this workshop is planned as an informative exploration, enabling and fun event, culminating in a solicitation of fellowship applications from UMD students.

A recent award from the Year of Data Science program at UMD will allow seven $3,500 fellowships for students proposing to develop joint projects during summer 2019. The anticipated application deadline is March 10, with decisions soon thereafter. Instruction for applicants will be provided at the workshop. It is hoped that these projects, and more generally, the interactions formed, may foster future funding applications by researchers from both institutions.

MAIN TOPICS WILL INCLUDE cancer immunology and immunotherapy, carcinogenesis, cancer genomics, precision cancer medicine, digital pathology, single cell omics, multi-omics analysis, liver cancer, lung cancer, breast cancer, tumor microenvironment, large scale drug response screens, pediatric oncology and more. This will provide an opportunity for UMD students and faculty to learn about the state of the art in some current topics of cancer research. A detailed agenda will be posted shortly.

No registration is needed.