Dongmei Wang - US grants

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).

With this award from the Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) program, Facundo Fernandez and colleagues Thomas Orlando, Mark Sullards and Dongmei Wang from Georgia Institute of Technology will develop an atmospheric pressure ion mobility mass spectrometer for ambient imaging. The proposed imaging mass spectrometer will combine ambient ion sources with ion-mobility and hybrid quadrupole time-of-flight mass analyzers to achieve improved chemical separation. The proposed mass spectrometer will be used to do chemical imaging in a number of research projects, from the study of chemical defenses in marine algae to the detection of counterfeit pharmaceuticals. The project will be carried out by a diverse group of young scientists, ranging from the high-school to postdoctoral level.

Mass Spectrometry (MS) is one of the key analytical methods used to identify and characterize small quantities of chemical species embedded in complex matrices. Imaging mass spectrometry is a new application, whereby, species are collected from a material's surface and chemically analyzed. In this way, a chemically-specific photograph of an object can be obtained. Scientists may use the photograph to determine details of biological or chemical processes in intact samples, with only minimal perturbation. The young scientists working with Fernandez and colleagues will obtain first-hand experience in instrument development -- a critical skill for a technologically-driven society.

Computational systems biology is a highly inter-disciplinary research area that seeks to understand interplays of molecules and cells in time and space to determine functioning of a complex biological system using sophisticate mathematical and statistical tools. Fostering a new generation of computational biologists that possess the interdisciplinary expertise of molecular biology and computational science will significantly impact future biological and biomedical research and industry.

IEEE Workshop on Genomic Signal Processing and Statistics, or GENSIPS, is a workshop sponsored by the IEEE Signal Processing Society. The goals of GENSIPS 2012 are 1) to address the systems biology issues in the emerging omics fields, especially the next-generation sequencing technologies; 2) to significantly increase the participation of graduate students and post-doctoral researchers, especial woman and minority students from signal processing, computer science, biostatistics, and biological science community. This request for fund from NSF will provide travel awards to qualified graduate students and doctoral researchers to support them to present their research papers. Particularly, 20-30% of the awards will be allocated to woman and minority students. Ultimately, GENSIPS 2012 will contribute to fostering student education on computational systems biology.

Computational systems biology is a groundbreaking research area that seeks to use tools from engineering systems theory to understand the holistic functioning of a complex biological system. Translation of such knowledge into medicine is revolutionizing and will continue to revolutionize disease diagnosis and prognosis, medical therapy, disease prevention, drug discovery, and drug design. The objective of this project is to seek student travel support from NSF for the IEEE Workshop on Genomic Signal Processing and Statistics, or GENSIPS, a workshop sponsored annually by the IEEE Signal Processing Society.

Intellectual merit
Our goals for GENSIPS13 are: 1) to address the systems biology issues in the emerging "omics" fields of genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics, especially the next-generation sequencing technologies (which facilitate parallel and much faster sequencing of DNA or RNA); and 2) to significantly increase the participation from the Signal Processing society, and the computer science, biostatistics, and biological science communities. The theme of GENSIPS13 will be next generation sequencing and systems biology applied to cancer. We will be inviting expert plenary speakers from the cancer research and genome research fields. To broaden the reach of the scientific work presented in the meeting, accepted papers will be published in the IEEE Conference Proceedings and selected ones in special issues in high profile journals.

Broader Impact
Another important mission of GENSIPS13 is to promote the participation of graduate students and post-doctoral researchers, especially women and minority students, and foster student education on systems biology. GENSIPS13 will provide travel awards to qualified graduate students, whose papers are deemed to be of high quality. Specifically, 20-30% of the awards will be allocated to encourage women and minority students to participate and submit papers to GENSIPS13.

Computational systems biology is a multi-disciplinary research area that combines biology, computer science, engineering and statistics. The goal of this research area is to develop and apply computational methods for analyzing of complex biological phenomena. The 2014 IEEE Workshop on Genomic Signal Processing and Statistics (GENSIPS) aims to bring together expertise in biology, computer science, signal processing, engineering and statistics, and provide a forum to discuss challenges confronting the research community. GENSIPS'14 teamed up with the 2014 IEEE Global Conference on Signal and Information Processing (GlobalSIP'14), a flagship conference in IEEE Signal Processing Society that brings together 13 symposia and 2 workshops. GENSIPS is one of the two workshops, and is synergistic to symposiums on algorithms, big data and machine learning. Such a partnership is anticipated to foster collaborations and interdisciplinary research ideas.


Intellectual Merit: The theme of GENSIPS-14 is going to be centered around computational systems biology and signal processing. One major goal is to provide a forum for addressing research problems at the forefront of this area, including next-generation sequencing, integration of multi-modality genomics data, modeling of regulatory and signaling networks, single-cell analysis, metagenomics, and several other topics in this fast growing field.

Broader Impact: The partnership with GlobalSIP-14 attracts participations from the signal processing society. To enable signal processing researcher to jump-start in computational systems biology, GENSIPS-14 offers three tutorials on drug effect prediction, single-cell analysis, and imaging informatics.

Another important mission of GENSIPS-14 is to promote the participation of graduate students and post-doctoral researchers (especially women and minority), and foster education and development of the next-generation scientists in computational systems biology. GENSIPS-14 will provide travel awards to encourage graduate students to participate. Specifically, 20-30% of the awards will be allocated to encourage women and minority students to participate and submit papers to GENSIPS-14.

Research in the biological and health sciences has been characterized by the introduction of novel technologies for investigations of molecular machineries, where a huge amount of data coming from experiments or medical practice has been stored in novel databases; new algorithms for studying functions, structures, interactions of proteins and genes, and classification of patients into disease subgroups that shares a common biological basis of diseases have been introduced; and almost all "omics" areas have been touched by new data sources with large repositories, new computational tools and applications powered by new algorithms. The ACM Special Interest Group on Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, and Health Informatics (SIGBio; http://www.sigbioinformatics.org/) was instituted in 2010 with the aim of focusing on research on bioinformatics data management topics, with a focus on bridging computational, statistical and mathematical sciences with biology and biomedicine. The ACM-Bioinformatics and Computational Biology meeting will provide a platform for researchers to bridge interdisciplinary research and also provide mechanisms to promote diverse and broad participation, especially through travel support for graduate students and young investigators.

The Annual ACM International Conference on Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (ACM BCB) is the premier conference in the areas of bioinformatics, computational biology, and biomedical informatics. The 7th ACM BCB 2016 will be held in Seattle WA, Oct.2-5, 2016, (http://acm-bcb.org/). The award will provide support for female keynote speaker and 25 selected students with high priority given to female and minority students and young professionals to participate in the conference. ACM-BCB conference provides a common platform to bridge important interdisciplinary research areas in computer science, mathematics, statistics, biology, bioinformatics, and biomedicine and an interactive forum which brings together experienced researchers, practitioners, and students from around the world to promote scientific understanding and findings in bioscience. Students will learn about advanced knowledge in bioinformatics and computational biology, enhance their knowledge in the cutting edge inter/multidisciplinary fields, and participate in special student activities aimed. To promote broad participation in this event, ACM BCB includes the "women in bioinformatics" initiative that aims to recruit and engage young female students and researchers in this interdisciplinary area. ACM BCB 2016 is inviting a distinguished female keynote speaker whose experience and success may inspire many students, especially underrepresented minorities and women, to enter this exciting field.

The ACM-BCB conference is a leading venue for presenting results and building a bioinformatics and computational biology community. The presented papers will appear will be included in the ACM BCB 2016 proceedings published by ACM Digital Library. To enhance the results dissemination, the authors of selected papers will be invited to adapt their papers for publication in a special issue of IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (TCBB), or a special issue of IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics (J-BHI).

Despite the administrative and regulatory emphasis on increasing healthcare quality and reducing hospital readmissions, the disparate and disconnected electronic health record systems in US remain largely incompatible. In addition, data is collected at varying geographic locations with different scales. They hinder the development of learning healthcare systems in US for healthcare quality improvement and cost reduction. It was estimated that by providing interoperability standard that allows different stakeholders to exchange health related data and information, the cost can be tremendously reduced. Thus, Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), which integrates heterogeneous data sources from local, regional, and national partners to enable the development of a new generation of intelligent health decision support systems, has recently been introduced as a new interoperability standard for health systems and information exchange. This project aims to develop an intelligent computational-health platform that harmonizes heterogeneous data sources such as various electronic medical records (EMRs), ontologies, and population-health databases, and deploys fast data analytics models to improve clinical point-of-care and global public health policy decision support.

Specifically, the development of this intelligent computational-health platform includes creating new resources under FHIR and new systems under Substitutable Medical Applications and Reusable Technologies based on FHIR (SMART-on-FHIR) for healthcare, leveraging common data models to harmonize different health data sources into FHIR-enabled databases, and comparing with baseline electronic data capture databases. The resulting platform with harmonized heterogeneous datasets and advanced data analytics can enable the following functions for healthcare: (i) on decision support at the point-of-care, heterogeneous EMRs covering large patient population are integrated to identify both time series data and discrete clinical features to predict acute medical event for future patients; (ii) on clinical decision making that requires extensive medical knowledge for interpretation, probabilistic methods such as Markov Logic Network are used to create graphs and rules. Such rules are then combined with EMR data mining to improve clinical relevance of final decisions; and (iii) on public health policy decision support, incompatible electronic death records in different States in US are integrated with EMRs to discover the causes of high prevalent deaths for public health surveillance. Thus, this EAGER project not only integrates different EMRs, knowledge database, and population databases for analytics development, but also assesses the capabilities and constraints of the FHIR standard.

Young Professional Research Forum at EMBC 2016
The aim of the Young Professional Research Forum at EMBC is to provide doctoral students and early career researchers a supportive scientific forum for students to engage in inter- and multi-disciplinary scholarship focusing on organizational, technical, social, and biomedical issues surrounding health-related technologies. The Young Professional Research Forum provides for expert and peer critique of participants' work with the goal of improving their research. Student participants will also have the opportunity to receive networking support and career advice from internationally-recognized experts. Overall, the doctoral consortium brings together people who might not otherwise engage with one another and engage in inter-disciplinary research in fields involving health, computing and engineering. The Young Professional Research Forum also exposes participant to different scientific disciplinary approaches and develops the next generation of scholars in computing in the domain of health.

The aim of the Young Professional Research Forum at EMBC is to support doctoral students and early career researchers through constructive remarks and feedback on their interdisciplinary research from prominent researchers and through interaction with other researchers. Participants from a broad range of disciplines including biomedical informatics, computer science, information science, engineering, clinical sciences and medical informatics will give short presentations of their work and receive constructive feedback from internationally respected experts. The expert panelists will also provide student participants with career guidance and mentoring through presentations and small group advising throughout the day. In addition, Young Professional Research Forum will be held throughout the conference activities, thus participants will have the opportunity to see the conference and network with conference attendees.

The 8th ACM International Conference on Bioinformatics and Computational Biology and Health Informatics (ACMBCB2017) is the flagship conference of the ACM SIGBio (Special Interest Group in Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, and Health Informatics) to be held in Boston, MA, August 20-23, 2017. It is the premier dissemination forum for interdisciplinary research linking computer science, mathematics, statistics, biology, bioinformatics, biomedical informatics, and health informatics. Its mission is to support advanced research, training, and outreach. It brings together leading researchers, practitioners, and students around the world to promote novel scientific findings in bioscience and to deliver new knowledge for societal impact. The past few decades have seen tremendous growth in the scale and complexity of biological and medical data including recent mainstream recognition of big data challenges. However, the development of synergy in bioinformatics, computational biology, and biomedical informatics research has been difficult. Thus, it is important to cultivate the new culture when training younger generations. This NSF grant will provide support to about 20 top junior U.S.-based professionals (students and recently graduated post-doctoral fellows) to participate in the conference. In addition, because women and underrepresented minority groups have relatively low participation in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (BCB), ACMBCB2017 will expand its "Women in Bioinformatics" organization to strongly encourage participation from women and other underrepresented junior researchers. Two senior professionals will be invited to share their experience and wisdom in career development, and to serve as mentors to facilitate young professional groups with the goal to continually build the community throughout the year. The goal of these activities is to increase the participation of junior researchers; train the next generation of researchers and educators in computer science, biological science, biomedical science and other related areas; broaden the diversity from underrepresented groups in BCB; and provide mentorship by senior researchers serve to young professionals to improve bioinformatics, computational biology, and health informatics community building in ACM SIGBio.

The ACMBCB2017 conference will showcase leading-edge research on new technologies and techniques around gathering, processing, analyzing, and modeling of data and information for a variety of scientific, clinical, and healthcare applications, from bench to bedside. It will provide well planned and organized activities such as workshops, tutorials, oral sessions, and poster sessions for researchers from different disciplines to interact, to foster discussion and collaboration. The ACMBCB2017 materials, including contributions from the junior researchers (e.g., short research proposals and presentations) will be shared on website ACMBCB2017 (http://acm-bcb.org/2017/).

This project provides travel support for students (graduate, undergraduate, and high school) to attend ACM SIGBio (Associate Computing Machinery Special Interest Group in Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, and Health Informatics) annual International Conference on Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, and Health Informatics (ACMBCB) in Washington DC during Aug. 29-Sept. 01, 2018 (http://acm-bcb.org/). ACMBCB2018 aims to provide an interactive forum that bridges computer science, mathematics, statistics, with biology and health, and to support advanced research, training, and outreach. It brings together top researchers, educators, practitioners, and students around the world to share innovative biological and medical discoveries, new informatics algorithms, new computational tools that will advance biological and health science, and improve national health. It consists of systematically organized activities such as plenary keynotes, workshops, tutorials, research oral sessions, poster sessions, and panels for researchers and practitioners from different disciplines to interact, to discuss, and to collaborate. It will encourage diverse groups of students, especially the underrepresented minority (women, minority, and disabled) to actively participate in conference activities, to grow ACM SIGBio community, and to advance the fast-growing interdisciplinary education and research.

As part of this award activity, ACMBCB2018 will organize a Student Forum and "Women in Bioinformatics" panel with senior academic and industrial experts serving as the mentors. These mentors will provide feedback to attending students' research, and will share their personal experience and wisdom in career development. These students will write a short summary to report their ACMBCB2018 experience. Overall, the project will assist students in gaining knowledge, to improve their visibility and to advance novel advancements in bioinformatics, computational biology, and health informatics.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

The 10th Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) International Conference on Bioinformatics and Computational Biology and Health Informatics (ACMBCB2019), the flagship conference of the ACM SIGBio (Special Interest Group in Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, and Health Informatics), will be held in Niagara Falls, NY, on September 7-10, 2019. It is the premier dissemination forum for interdisciplinary research linking computer science, mathematics, statistics, biology, bioinformatics, biomedical informatics, and health informatics. Its mission is to support advanced research, training, and outreach. It brings together superb researchers, practitioners, and students from around the world to promote novel scientific findings in bioscience and to deliver new knowledge for societal impact. The past few decades have seen tremendous growth in the scale and complexity of biological and medical data including recent mainstream recognition of big data challenges. However, the development of synergy in bioinformatics, computational biology, and health informatics research has been difficult. Thus, it is important to train new researchers to achieve this synergy. This award will support up to 15 early-career professionals (students and recently graduated post-doctoral fellows) to share their travel costs to the conference. Senior researchers will serve as mentors to these early-career professionals to improve bioinformatics, computational biology, and health informatics community building. This award aims to increase the participation of students and recently graduated post-docs; train the next generation of researchers and educators in computer science, biological science, biomedical science and other related areas; and broaden diversity in bioinformatics and computational biology.

The ACMBCB2019 conference will showcase leading-edge research on new technologies and techniques around gathering, processing, analyzing, and modeling of data and information for a variety of scientific, clinical, and healthcare applications from bench to bedside. It will provide activities such as workshops, tutorials, oral sessions, and poster sessions for researchers from different disciplines to interact, to discuss, and to collaborate. To be selected for participation, early-career professionals will need to submit a short research proposal containing Intellectual Merit, Broader Impact, and supporting information such as a resume and a letter of support from their advisors. A committee consisting of experienced researchers will review the research proposals and select the awardees with the support from the conference organizers. In addition, this award will enable ACMBCB2019 to expand "Women in Bioinformatics" to strongly encourage participation from more underrepresented groups by inviting senior researchers to share their experience and wisdom in career development, and to serve as mentors to facilitate early-career professional groups with the goal to continually build the community throughout the year.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

As the annual flagship conference of ACM SIGBio (Special Interest Group in Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, and Health Informatics), the ACM International Conference on Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, and Health Informatics (ACMBCB) is aimed to provide an interactive forum that bridges computer science, mathematics, statistics, with biology and health. Its mission is to support<br/>advanced research, training, and outreach. It brings together top researchers, practitioners, and students around the world to share innovative discovery, advanced development and delivery of informatics solutions to promote computational science, engineering for national health and biological advancement for societal impact. The ACMBCB2022 will be in Chicago IL during Aug. 7th-Sept. 01, 2023. This NSF grant will provide travel and registration support for up to 10 students (graduate, undergraduate, and high school) to attend the conference. The students will need to submit a short description about their on-going academic study and motivation for attending ACMBCB2022 (suggested to follow NSF Intellectual Merit, Broad Impact summary), plus supporting information such as a biosketch, a photo, and a letter of support from their advisor/mentor for selection. In addition, this NSF grant will broaden the diversity of participation from underrepresented groups (women, minority, and disabled) to enhance the community-building beyond the conference.<br/><br/>The 21st century is witnessing many transformations enabled by innovations happening at the interface of molecular biology, medicine, health, with statistics, computer science, data science, informatics, cloud computing, and AI. Thus, it is critical to cultivate the new culture when training younger generations. ACMBCB2022 will provide systematically organized activities such as workshops, tutorials, oral sessions, and poster sessions for researchers and practitioners from different disciplines to interact, to discuss, and to collaborate. NSF support will maximize both learning and research outcomes of students. Not only they will learn novel advancements in bioinformatics, computational biology, and health informatics from the conference and improve their knowledge, but also they will share their own research ideas in Student Forum to gain visibility and feedback. In addition, because underrepresented minority groups (women, minority, and students with disabilities) have relatively low participation, ACMBCB2022 will continually promote diversity in participation through both Student Forum and “Women in Bioinformatics” organization. Senior researchers will be invited to provide feedback , and to share experience and wisdom in career development to continually build the community throughout the year.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.