The Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN) was designed as the first national cyber-infrastructure for biomedical research. Created in 2001 by the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), then a unit of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), BIRN initially was funded for more than $20 million.
Its purpose: to create a shared, distributed computing framework for databases, data integration, inter-operable analysis tools and data mining software. The initiative sought to create a scalable, extensible system for neuroscience that readily could be extended to other disciplines.
At its founding, BIRN consisted of a centralized “coordinating center” to develop, implement and support the network, along with three “testbed” projects. Each testbed would itself be a multi-university consortium. BIRN’s principal investigator and Coordinating Center leader was Mark Ellisman, Ph.D., a professor of neurosciences and bioengineering at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD).
Testbeds consisted of the:
Morphometry BIRN to pool and analyze data across neuroimaging sites for potential relationships between anatomical differences and specific memory dysfunctions, led by Bruce Rosen, M.D., Ph.D. of Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Massachusetts General Hospital;
Function BIRN to standardize data collection and analysis for multi-site magnetic resonance imaging of schizophrenia patients, led by Stephen Potkin, M.D., of the University of California at Irvine; and
Mouse BIRN to study neurodegenerative diseases by pooling and analyzing multi-scale structural and functional mouse data, led by G. Allan Johnson, Ph.D., of Duke University. The Mouse BIRN subsequently transitioned to the leadership of Arthur W. Toga, Ph.D., of the University of California at Los Angeles.
BIRN also was affiliated initially with the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, part of the state-funded California Institutes for Science and Innovation (CalIT2) initiative to promote innovation on the model of Silicon Valley.
The consortium quickly doubled from 14 to 28 universities, and to a total of 37 research groups. Nearly 30 universities hosted physical nodes, or customized hardware, to facilitate communication between participants.
In early 2009, NCRR awarded $22.2 million over five years to the current BIRN consortium. BIRN now is led by principal investigator Carl Kesselman, Ph.D. – one of the fathers of distributed, software-oriented Grid computing – of the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute. The consortium quickly retired previous BIRN hardware, created its own software-development capability, and began actively recruiting participants across the biomedical research spectrum.
In December 2011, oversight of BIRN was transferred to the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS).
For more on BIRN’s current direction, please click here.
