CTSA Ontology Workshop

Venue: To be determined, almost certainly at a hotel close to a major Florida airport

Date: February 11-12, 2013

Principal Focus

The principal focus of the meeting is on the use of ontologies in the evaluation of scientific research, and specifically in the evaluation fo CTSA activities. The proposal is that when data are harvested from institutional sources -- for example pertaining to appointments, grants, publications, mentorship, and so forth -- these data can be aggregated using common ontologies such as are maintained by the eagle-i and VIVO initiatives.

As these data accumulate they can compared at regular intervals for purposes of tracking and evaluation of research activities. The data can also be exploited for other purposes, for instance to identify collaborators with specific sorts of expertise. The system could also be used to generate reports on research activities filtered by type, location, or temporally defined range.

Subgoals

-- explore a strategy to create an evaluation and tracking system for an organization like a CTSA based on, or working with, a university-wide system for faculty reporting

-- create an ontology (analogous to OBI) to support evaluation measurement

This meeting will also serve as the inaugural meeting of the new CTSA Ontology Affinity Group

Participants will include:

Sivaram Arabandi (Smart Content Team, Elsevier)

Mathias Brochhausen (Arkansas CTSA)

Michael Conlon (University of Florida CTSA / VIVO)

James Demery (University of Florida CTSA)

Melissa Haendel (Oregon / CTSAconnect)

William Hogan (Arkansas CTSA)

Warren Kibbe (Northwestern CTSA)

Barry Smith (Buffalo)

Dagobert Soergel (Buffalo)

Carlo Torniai (Oregon / CTSAconnect)

Organizers: William Hogan and Barry Smith

Sponsor: Translational Research Institute of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences

Further information: Please write to Barry Smith